Illuminated manuscripts in classical and mediaeval times, their art and their technique

by J. H. Middleton

Retables like MSS.Before passing on to the Italian miniatori of the last period, it is worth while to notice the strong influence that the art of manuscript illumination had on the painters of large retables and other sacred pictures in Italy and especially in Venice; just as was the case with the contemporary painters of Germany and Flanders[^[197]]. Many of the Venetian altar-pieces, from their minute detail, their use of burnished gold enriched with tooled patterns, their decorative treatment of flowers and their architectural backgrounds and framework, look exactly like a page from an illuminated manuscript.

Retable at Venice.

Retable at Venice.Fig. [51] shows a characteristic example of this, a magnificent retable glowing with brilliant colours and burnished gold, now in the Accademia of Venice, which was painted in 1446 in the little island of Murano by two painters named Johannes and Antonius de Murano[^[198]].

The same strongly marked influence of the decorative style of illuminated manuscripts is to be seen in nearly all the works of Carlo Crivelli, another Venetian painter of the latter part of the fifteenth century, and in the gorgeous retables of Gentile da Fabriano[^[199]], a follower of Fra Angelico's richly decorative and brilliantly coloured method of painting.

The XVIth century.

The XVIth century.Italian manuscripts of the sixteenth century. By about the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century the art of manuscript illumination had ceased in Italy to be a real living art; and, though it continued to be practised with great technical skill for more than half a century later, the art, which once had been one of the most beautiful and dignified of all branches of art, sank into the production of costly toys to please a few Popes and luxurious Princes who were willing to pay very large prices for manuscripts illuminated by the skilful hands of Giulio Clovio and other miniaturists, whose patience, eyesight and technical skill were superior to their sense of what was fitting and beautiful in an illuminated manuscript.

Fig. 51. A Venetian retable by Giovanni and Antonio di Murano, in the style of an illuminated manuscript.

Giulio Clovio.

Giulio Clovio.Of all the illuminators of this class the Dalmatian Giulio Clovio[^[200]] (1498-1578) was the most famous and technically the most skilful. He found many wealthy patrons in Italy and was employed by Charles V. of France.