[45] Riccio, C.W., Cenno Storico dell Accademia Alfonsina. Naples, 1865.
The Heures d'Aragon referred to above are a rich example of the Neapolitan Renaissance preserved in the National Library at Paris. Writers on Italian miniatures are very numerous, and a good deal of interesting information about Italian MSS. may be found in M. Delisle's Cabinet des MSS., etc.
There is one style of Italian illumination made very popular by the illuminators of the works of Petrarch, many of which are found in various libraries. That is the one called the vine-stem style. It consists of gracefully coiled stems, usually left uncoloured or softly tinted with yellow, and bearing here and there peculiar ornamental flowerets, while the grounds are picked out with various colours, on which are fine white triads of dots or traceries in delicate white or golden tendrils. A later variety of this style makes the stems of some pale but bright tint, and the grounds of deep colour. The vine-stem style seems to have prevailed throughout the whole of Italy just previous to the classic revival brought about by the Medici in throwing open their museums of sculptures, coins, and other antiquities, and by the liberal patronage of the new classic work by Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and the Dukes of Urbino. After 1500 the vine-stem style seems to have gradually died out, and thenceforward only varieties of the revived antique became the fashion.
To the Italian Renaissance we shall revert in a later chapter.
CHAPTER VII
GERMAN ILLUMINATION FROM THE THIRTEENTH TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Frederick II., Stupor Mundi, and his MS. on hunting—The Sicilian school mainly Saracenic, but a mixture of Greek, Arabic, and Latin tastes—The Franconian Emperors at Bamberg—Charles of Anjou—The House of Luxembourg at Prag—MSS. in the University Library—The Collegium Carolinum of the Emperor Charles IV.—MSS. at Vienna—The Wenzel Bible—The Weltchronik of Rudolf v. Ems at Stuttgard—Wilhelm v. Oranse at Vienna—The Golden Bull—Various schools—Hildesheimer Prayer-book at Berlin—The Nuremberg school—The Glockendons—The Brethren of the Pen.
In a former chapter we brought up the story of German illumination to the time of the Hohenstaufen emperors. We may now make a new start with Frederick II., the eccentric, resolute, intractable, accomplished Stupor Mundi (1210-50). Not only was he a patron and encouraged art, but also an author. The work which he composed is still extant, and is preserved in the Vatican Library under the title De arte venandi cum avibus. Paintings of birds and hunting scenes embellish its pages. The art is not specially high class, and though in courtesy it may be called German, seeing that he was the German Emperor, and in some respects is like the Imperial MSS. of the Saxon period, in point of fact it is Italian or Sicilian.[46] This Sicilian school is peculiar, and exhibits very slight traits of relationship with the rest of Italy. After the Arab conquest of the island in 827, whilst new ideas were imported, still the old Greek cities kept their ancient traditions and methods in art, especially in those branches we term industrial, and just as both Greek and Arabic tongues existed as vernaculars beside the Latin, so the arts and industries bore the features of three artistic tastes.
[46] (Bibl. Vatican, Palatina, No. 1071). Notice in Kobell, Kunstv. Miniaturen, p. 44.