| Paris Horae on vellum. Effect of colouring. |
Paris Horae on vellum.These are the numerous Books of Hours printed on vellum, richly decorated with wood-cut[[144]] borders and pictures, and frequently illuminated by painting in gold and opaque colours over the engravings. One of the earliest of these vellum-printed Horae was produced by Pigouchet for the bookseller Simon Vostre in 1487[[145]]; the pictures and borders are very simply treated in broad outline, which the illuminator was meant to fill in with colour, aided only in the general design by the wood-cut[[146]]. In 1498 Pigouchet began to execute for S. Vostre Books of Hours of quite a different and still finer style, with engravings of the most exquisite beauty of design and delicacy of detail, perfect masterpieces of the engraver's art. The decorative borders in these lovely books have dotted (criblée) backgrounds, and the whole effect, though merely in black and white, is rich and decorative in the highest degree. Effect of colouring.The comparatively coarse touch of the illuminator ruins the beauty of these Horae; but luckily a good many copies have escaped this tasteless treatment, which must have appealed only to a very ignorant love of gold and gaudy colour on the part of the purchasers.
| Decadence of style. |
Decadence of style.In the early part of the sixteenth century immense numbers and varieties of these vellum-printed Horae[[147]] were issued by Pigouchet and Vostre, Antoine Verard[[148]], Thielman Kerver and his widow, the brothers Hardouyn, and other Paris printers and publishers. The cuts from the earlier, fifteenth century editions[[149]], were reproduced, and a great number of new ones were cut; but after the year 1500 there was a most rapid deterioration of style. Even between the cuts of 1498 and those of 1503 a very marked change for the worse is apparent, the fine mediaeval French style being replaced by somewhat feeble imitations of the works of the Italian Renaissance.
These Parisian prayer-books gradually superseded the coarse manuscript Horae which were still produced in the early part of the sixteenth century; and the latest examples of these vellum-printed books, the work of Geoffroi Tory and others as late as 1546, came to be sold without any assistance from the hand, one can hardly say the art, of the illuminator in his extreme decadence.
| Latest decadence. |
Latest decadence.In a feeble way the art of writing and illuminating manuscripts, as a sort of plaything for the wealthy, lingered on in Paris till the seventeenth century. An illuminated Book of Hours (Office de la Sainte Vierge), with four miniatures and many floriated head-pieces of very minute workmanship, which was in the Perkins collection[[150]], is signed N. Jarry Parisinus Scribebat, 1660. Other elaborate examples of Nicholas Jarry's work exist in the Paris library, mostly painted in grisaille.
| Early printing. The Mentz Psalter. |
Early printing.A few words on the connection between early printing and the art of manuscript illumination may not here be out of place. The inventors of printing, Gutenberg, Fust and Schoeffer, appear to have had no idea of producing cheap books by their new art, but that for a fixed sum they could produce a more magnificent and beautiful book than a scribe could for the same price. Such a finished masterpiece of art as the Mazarine Bible, issued by Gutenberg in the year 1455, was not sold at a lower rate than the price of a manuscript Bible; but it was cheaper than a manuscript of equal splendour. The Mentz Psalter.So also very few scribes of the fifteenth century could with the utmost labour have produced such a marvel of beauty as the Mentz Psalter of 1559, printed on the finest vellum and illuminated with 280 large initials printed in blue and red—perfect marvels of technical skill in the perfect fit of the two colours, or registration as it is now called[[151]].
It is not known at what price this magnificent Psalter was originally sold, but existing records show that copies of the Vulgate produced in 1462 at Mentz by the same printers, Fust and Schoeffer, were sold in Paris for no less than sixty gold crowns, equal in modern value to double that number of sovereigns.