Richard II. was not the only art-loving King of his time. You have read of John, King of France, who was taken prisoner at the Battle of Poitiers by the Black Prince, father of Richard. During his captivity he lived in considerable state in London at the Savoy Palace, which occupied the site of the present Savoy Hotel in the Strand; he brought his own painter from France with him, who painted his portrait which still exists in Paris. This King John was the father of four remarkable sons, Charles V., King of France, with whom Edward III. and the Black Prince fought the latter part of the Hundred Years' War; Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy; John, Duke of Berry; and Louis, Duke of Anjou. In this list, all are names of remarkable men and great art-patrons, about whom you may some day read interesting things. Numerous lovely objects still in existence were made for them, and would not have been made at all if they had not been the men they were. It was only just becoming possible in the fourteenth century for a prince to be an art-patron. That required money, and hitherto even princes had rarely been rich. The increasing wealth of England, France, and Flanders at this time was based upon the wool industry and the manufacture and commerce to which it gave rise. The Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords to this day sits on a woolsack, which is a reminder of the time when the woolsacks of England were the chief source of the wealth of English traders.
After the Black Death, an awful plague that swept through Europe in 1349, a large part of the land of England was given up to sheep grazing, because the population had diminished, and it took fewer people to look after sheep than it did to till the soil. Although this had been an evil in the beginning, it became afterwards a benefit, for English wool was sold at an excellent price to the merchants of Flanders, who worked it up into cloth, and in their turn sold that all over Europe with big profits. The larger merchants who regulated the wool traffic were prosperous, and so too the landowners and princes whose property thus increased in value. The four sons of King John became very wealthy men. Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, by marrying the heiress of the Count of Flanders acquired the Flemish territory and the wealth obtained from the wool trade and manufacture there. Berry and Anjou were great provinces in France yielding a large revenue to their two Dukes. Each of these princes employed several artists to illuminate books for him in the most splendid way; they built magnificent châteaux, and had tapestries and paintings made to decorate their walls. They employed many sculptors and goldsmiths, and all gave each other as presents works of art executed by their favourite artists. In the British Museum there is a splendid gold and enamel cup that John, Duke of Berry, caused to be made for his brother King Charles V.; to see it would give you a good idea of the costliness and elaboration of the finest work of that day. The courts of these four brothers were centres of artistic production in all kinds—sculpture, metal-work, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and pictures, and there was a strong spirit of rivalry among the artists to see who could make the loveliest things, and among the patrons as to which could secure the best artists in his service.
These four princes gave an important impulse to the production of beautiful things in France, Burgundy, and Flanders, but it is needless to burden you with the artists' names.
In the fourteenth century an artist was a workman who existed to do well the work that was desired of him. He was not an independent man with ideas of his own, who attempted to make a living by painting what he thought beautiful, without reference to the ideas of a buyer. Of course, if people prefer and buy good things when they see them, good things will be likely to be made, but if those with money to spend have no taste and buy bad things or order ugly things to be made, then the men who had it in them to be great artists may die unnoticed, because the beautiful things they could have made are not called for. To-day many people spend something upon art and a few spend a great deal. Let us hope we may not see too much of the money spent in creating a demand for what is bad rather than for what is beautiful.
It was not unusual in the fourteenth century for a man to be at one and the same time painter, illuminator, sculptor, metal-worker, and designer of any object that might be called for. One of these many gifted men, André Beauneveu of Valenciennes, a good sculptor and a painter of some exquisite miniatures, is sometimes supposed to have been the painter of our picture of Richard II. In the absence of any signature or any definite record it is impossible to say who painted it, but it is unnecessary to assume that it must have been painted by a French artist, since we know that at the end of the fourteenth century there were very good painters in England.
It was by no means an exception not to sign a picture in those days, for the artists had not begun to think of themselves as individuals entitled to public fame. Hand-workers of the fourteenth century mostly belonged to a corporation or guild composed of all the other workers at the same trade in the same town, and to this rule artists were no exception. Each man received a recognized price for his work, and the officers of the guild saw to it that he obtained that price and that he worked with good and durable materials. There were certain advantages in this, but it involved some loss of freedom in the artist, since all had to conform to the rules of the guild. The system was characteristic of the Middle Ages, and arose from the fact that in those troublous times every isolated person needed protection and was content to merge his individuality in some society in order to obtain it. The guilds made for peace and diminished competition, so that a guildsman may have been less tempted to hurry over or scamp his task. The result was much honest, careful work such as you see in the original of this picture. We are told by those who know best that there has never been a time when the actual workmanship of the general run of craftsmen was better than in the Middle Ages.
This picture of Richard II. has not faded or cracked or fallen off the panel, and it seems as though we may hope it never will, for it was well made and, what is even more important, it seems always to have been well cared for. If only the nice things that are produced were all well cared for, how many more of them there would be in the world!