The design and the writing on [plate 10] are thoroughly English of the end of the thirteenth century. The picture is unfinished, having been left by the artist in its sketch-condition, uncoloured. The faces are blank, and the drawing simply in outline; but the careful treatment of the folds in the drapery is remarkable. The miniature is one of several illustrating the Apocalypse, which were done in the convent at Eaton or Nun-Eaton in Warwickshire about 1280. The Apocalypse is not given in its Latin summaries, as was usual, but in French quatrains of English origin. The volume which contains these drawings is interesting, as having been a sort of omnium gatherum, made up for the ladies of Eaton at the end of the thirteenth century. One of the pieces it contains is a Bestiaire by William the Trouvère, an Englishman of the twelfth century; a French poem called the Chastel d'Amours by Raymond Grosseteste; and a popular English poem of the time, of which another example has been lately published in facsimile in his "English Palæography" by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat.
The miniature of the Crucifixion which is reproduced on [plate 11] is visibly Italian work of the rudest style. It is taken from a Missal, written in a hand which is also Italian of the end of the thirteenth century, but gothic in form. The liturgical character of the book is, however, such that we may believe it to have been produced in England, perhaps by an Italian Cistercian monk. The writing on the miniature is in so-called Lombardic uncials, a script which was used for capitals nearly everywhere in the thirteenth century. The three figures in the picture have red or auburn hair, a favourite colour at all times among the Italians, even after the Flemings had introduced a blackhaired Christ. Another noticeable feature is the building with an arcade and windows, in the lower background.
[Plate 12] is an illustration of the story of Troilus and Cressida, taken from Guido Colonna's Tale of Troy. It is Venetian, of about the years 1330-40, and exhibits the Italian style of using strong pigments for their figures. Whatever the faults of drawing may be, this is a real painting done with a full brush. There is no appearance of the outlines drawn with a pen or a fine brush, such as we see in French and English work, and the folds in the draperies appear to be produced by broad shadowings after the main body of colour had been painted. In fact, it seems to be, like other Italian illuminations, the work of a painter, not of a miniaturist. The place of origin is revealed by the calligrapher's instructions to the artist, which occur on several pages in a minute hand, and which are written in a pure Venetian dialect. The manuscript is illustrated with an unusual quantity of pictorial designs. The writing is remarkable as resembling that of the English charters of the same period, but with greater regularity and evenness in the downstrokes.
[Plate 13] is reproduced from a French Apocalypse of the fourteenth century, with a text in French prose. The writing is gothic, much changed from the style of the thirteenth century, and less regular and elegant. The picture is thoroughly French, of the time when English illuminators had yielded up their supremacy to the men of the French school. We see the fine outlines and features as we are accustomed to see them in thirteenth century work, offering in their delicate style a curious contrast to the broad free paintiness of the illustration in plate 12. The Apocalypse, from which the plate is taken, is a French work of the middle of the fourteenth century, showing a good deal of the feeling of the preceding century, but tending visibly towards the manner of the time when Charles V of France and his brothers were associated with manuscripts of an unusually beautiful kind.
[Plate 14] is an example of French grisaille in its earlier stage. The four designs look like fine chalk drawings prepared for the use of an engraver, rather than like finished illustrations in a book. There is an ease and freedom in the figure-drawing which reveal the hand of a true artist, and the treatment of the draperies is excellent; but the landscape accessories in the lower two divisions are primitive in their absurdity and childish execution. The writing in this example, and in plate 13 also, is typical fourteenth century gothic; small, cramped, square, and angular. The border is of the early ivy-leaf pattern, stiff and not natural, but not inelegant as decoration. The style and character of the two plates are essentially French, and could not be found in examples of illumination at the period anywhere outside of France.
[Plate 15] introduces us to a totally different kind and style of ornament. There is no appearance of stiffness here in the border, with its bold conventional foliage of light blue and green, and the long feathery lines that sweep out from it in free and graceful curves. The miniature too is full of merit both in design and execution, its only drawback being the rather ugly pattern of the green flooring. The seated priest is in the full costume of a doctor or literatus of Chaucer's time; and the expression in his features, as well as in those of the kneeling Gower, is excellently rendered. The writing here is not the square angular gothic of the two preceding plates, but a more rounded script, partaking of the nature of the charter hand, which was appropriated to the English language. The a is the only letter in it quite identical with that of the fourteenth century gothic, and the p (for th) shows the survival of Anglo-Saxon writing, just as the w shows us a modern English letter at a tolerably early stage of its growth. The k is likewise noteworthy, as being the peculiar form of the letter which had been evolved in the rapid writing of court-scribes, and which is still used in German manuscript.
[Plate 16] shows us Franco-Flemish art in a phase in which the simple mastery of design had become subordinate to the brilliancy and magnificence of decoration. The inner border of interwoven blue and red lines upon a ground of gold is connected with, and grows out of, the illuminated initial in a suitably appropriate fashion, but the outer border of conventional foliage, red, blue, green, and yellow, with its inserted figures of a kneeling man and a hybrid dromedary, has no comprehensible affinity to the rest of the work, and is tacked on without any reason beyond the desire for splendour and variety. The style is not distinctively Flemish, although the painting was done at Tournay. It is rather a development out of Franco-Burgundian models, and more suggestive of French origin than any other; in fact, the extension of central French influence northwards through Burgundy.
In [plate 17] there is real Flemish work. Here is pure grisaille at its best; no infusion of extraneous colour in the design, except in the tesselated pavement of yellow and white marble, and no glitter of illumination beyond what is given by a gold crown in the hands of one figure, and a couple of gold chains on the breasts of two others. This is indeed a true historical picture broadly conceived, well composed, and admirably executed. The perspective is excellent, and we realise clearly the size and depth of the large vaulted chamber, lighted only from the doorways and the open window-spaces,—in which the eight personages are grouped. The manuscript from which the miniature is taken was written and illustrated, almost undoubtedly, at Bruges about 1470 for a nobleman of the Lannoy family, a member not of the principal house which still flourished in Flanders, but of the transplanted branch in Picardy.
[Plate 18] is taken from an English manuscript of considerable interest. A number of armorial bearings, which are found on the margins of the pages, show that it was written either for the Marquis of Dorset, Edward IV's son-in-law, or for one of his children. Whichever was the case, the book was in the possession of John Grey, dominus de Blisworth, the son or near relative of the Marquis, in the early part of the sixteenth century; and there is a record added in the calendar of the death of Dame Elizabeth Grey, this John's wife, about 1520-30. The miniatures are good, but not excellent; better in composition than in design, and showing grave deficiencies with regard to perspective. They are, however, well executed and well painted; and the borders are remarkably elegant. The conventional large foliage, of architectonic character, is admirably disposed upon small and appropriate fields of gold; and the twining branchlets that bear tiny buds and small leaves and flowers are not so crowded as to hide the vellum ground. The border is indeed a fine decorative composition, without a fault, and thoroughly English in style. There is an inscription at the foot of the miniature which inspires curiosity to learn who the writer was. She was evidently a woman of high position; for only such a personage would have been allowed to write in a Prayerbook of the kind. The words are, "Madame, I pray you remember her that ys yours and evver sall be," but the bookbinder has unfortunately cut off the signature. The person addressed was no doubt Dame Elizabeth Grey. The writing is strangely like that of Henry VII, but cannot of course have been his. It is possibly as late as 1520.
[Plate 22] is from a Prayerbook written and illuminated about 1520-30 for a certain Giovanni Bentivoglio. If the book had been a dozen or twenty years earlier than it seems to be, one might have supposed that it was executed at Bologna, by the order and for the use of the last Bentivoglio who ruled in that city. As, however, he died in exile and misfortune in 1508, the Giovanni to whom the prayerbook belonged, must have been his grandson, born about 1510, who was in the imperial service in 1530. The artistic merit of the illumination is considerable, but they are over-florid and mark a decay of taste. The colours are vivid and harmonious, gold is plentifully used, and the beauty of the work is undeniable; but it is meretricious and corrupt in style. Italian examples of the period are, however, rare and highly prized.