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Hung separately in the Santuario at Chantilly these forty miniatures of Fouquet form an important monument of French fifteenth-century Art and provide strong evidence that French works of the highest merit certainly existed at that time. Their present scarcity is no doubt due to vandalism and wilful destruction. In these miniatures are apparent all the qualities so characteristic of French Art, i.e. its exquisite grace, its adaptability to foreign elements without loss of its own individuality, its sense of humour, its restrained realism and its overmastering love for Nature.
CHAPTER XV
JEAN PERRÉAL AND BOURDICHON
IT is hardly conceivable that a master like Fouquet, so famous as a painter of miniatures and portraits, should really have left no followers. Indeed, it has been said that he ought to have been succeeded by a French Raphael. Unfortunately the adverse circumstances which surrounded French Art at that period prevented Fouquet’s followers from arriving at the eminence achieved by their master.
We hear of frescoes in the house of Joan of Arc, executed by some unknown artist in 1481 (the year of Fouquet’s demise), which represented that great heroine and her noble deeds. Had they but survived an interesting page of history would have come down to us and we might have even possessed an authentic likeness of her. Montaigne, when passing through the country of Lorraine on his way to Italy, saw these paintings, and makes mention of them in his Journal[65] as follows: “La maisonette où naquit Jeanne d’Arc est toutes peintes de ses gestes; mais l’orage en a fort corrompu la peinture”—a further proof of the havoc played upon early French Art by time and neglect.
A younger contemporary of Fouquet was Simon Marmion, who lived at Valenciennes and is chiefly known to us by his fine altarpiece at Saint-Bertin: a composition now divided between Berlin and London. Moreover, two of Fouquet’s sons served their father as assistants and to them may be ascribed some of the works of his school—such, for instance, as a miniature representing an Angelic Choir shown at the Exhibition of Illuminated MSS. arranged by the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1908.
Bourdichon and Jean Perréal, Jean Payet and Jean Colombe may be considered as followers of Fouquet; yet documentary evidence is very scanty. It is true, however, that there exist some fragments of historical information which would seem to allude to their work; as, for example, the following fact. Some fifty years ago cartridges which had been made up during the time of the Revolution in default of other material out of old manuscripts and contracts were found in the arsenal of the Hôtel des Invalides; and it was to Comte de Laborde that the idea occurred of making a closer investigation of the composition of these cartridges. After a careful study of those time-worn and crumpled fragments he discovered upon one of them the name of Bourdichon and with it the additional facts that he resided in the town of Tours, where Fouquet was born; that his birth took place in 1457; that at the early age of twenty-one he was entrusted with the execution of certain frescoes in a chapel; and that he was Court-Painter to Charles VIII, whose portrait he painted, as well as that of his Queen, Anne de Bretagne. A small portrait of her son, Prince Orlant,[66] who died in childhood, has been attributed to Bourdichon; and a similar portrait, representing his younger brother Charles, which came to light only recently[67] and was acquired by the Louvre, is evidently by the same hand.[68]
Bourdichon’s skill can be traced with greater certainty in various Books of Hours[69]: i.e. the “Heures d’Aragon,” a small volume adorned with graceful miniatures considered by M. E. Mâle to be one of his early works; while the Prayer Book of Anne de Bretagne, which is authenticated by a document dated 1508 (Bibl. Nat.), is a later and more finished achievement. Compared, however, with Fouquet’s style, the work of Bourdichon seems like wine diluted with water, whilst the total absence of landscape from the backgrounds of his miniatures gives to his figures an unusually cold appearance. His Madonna is distinguished-looking but rather rigid and devoid of expression; his Magdalen though poetical seems lifeless; and as for the portrait of Queen Anne herself and her companions on the Frontispiece it is purely conventional without attempt at aiming at a likeness. Instead of the landscapes which form so fascinating a part of the work of his predecessors we find him introducing great masses of flowers on the margins of the illuminations. The Queen who commissioned the book evidently was devoted to flowers; and thus Bourdichon, probably at her express command, brought them in wherever he could. We must indeed give him credit for a vast amount of charm and delicacy in the execution of these lovely flowers and they form a very perfect and beautiful decoration.
Although M. Bouchot mentions the name of Bourdichon more than once in reference to certain drawings at Chantilly there is nothing amongst the treasures of the Musée Condé which really can be attributed to him with any certainty.
With Jean Perréal it is different. He is the artist who has been identified by some authorities with the mysterious Maître de Moulins. It was M. de Maulde and Henri Bouchot who first propounded this theory; and they were supported by Mr. Roger Fry and M. Hulin after the Exhibition of the French Primitifs in 1904, where a number of works supposed to be by this master were arranged in definite order for comparison purposes.