Fig. 49. An illuminated border from a manuscript by Attavante of characteristic north Italian style.
| Liberale of Verona. |
Liberale of Verona.Another Veronese painter, Liberale di Giacomo, who was born in 1451, was in his youth a very skilful miniaturist.
He spent some years in illuminating large choir-books for the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto near Siena, and then after 1469 he was for long occupied in the illumination of similar choir-books for the Cathedral of Siena[[194]].
The miniatures in these great Antiphonals are most exquisitely finished, rich in fancy, brilliant in colour, but wanting decorative breadth of style. With a far greater expenditure of labour and eyesight, these wonderful illuminations are far inferior to the works of the fourteenth century French miniaturists, and show signs of that decadence of taste, which, in the sixteenth century, led to the destruction of the true illuminator's art[[195]].
| MSS. of N. Italy. |
MSS. of N. Italy.In addition to Venice, Padua and Ferrara were both important centres of manuscript illumination of a very high order during the fifteenth century. The Paduan miniatures show strongly the influence of Andrea Mantegna and Gian Bellini, whose styles also appear in the contemporary manuscripts of Venice. The British Museum possesses a magnificent example of the work of one of the ablest miniatori of Padua, a Missal by Benedetto Bordone, who also illuminated the great choir-books of the Convent of Santa Justina in Padua.
Fig. 50. A miniature from the Bible of Duke Borso d'Este, painted between 1455 and 1461 by illuminators of the school of Ferrara.
| School of Ferrara. |