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

by J. H. Middleton

Fig. 27. Miniature of the marriage of the B. V. Mary from a French manuscript of about 1480, with details in the style of the Italian Renaissance.

Horae of Jehan Foucquet.

Horae of Jehan Foucquet.The painting represented in Fig. [27] is from a manuscript Book of Hours illuminated by the famous miniaturist Jehan Foucquet of Tours, whose services were secured by Louis XI. from 1470 to 1475. This manuscript Horae, which has been horribly mutilated, the miniatures being cut out of the text, was originally executed for Maître Etienne Chevalier. Foucquet and other French illuminators of his time were largely influenced not only by Italian art, but also by the Flemish school of miniaturists who were followers of Memlinc and Rogier van der Weyden; but by the end of the fifteenth century the Italian influence reigned supreme and soon destroyed all remaining traces of the older mediaeval or Gothic style.

Fig. [28] shows part of a border from the same MS. that is illustrated in Fig. [25] on page [134].

Fig. 28. Border illumination from a Book of Hours by Jacquemart de Odin; see fig. [25].

CHAPTER X.

Printed Books with Painted Illuminations.

During the last few years of the fifteenth century and the first twenty or thirty years of the sixteenth century Paris was remarkable for the production of a beautiful class of books which form a link between printed books and illuminated manuscripts.