Germany now began to improve in the art of painting miniatures. It owed this happy result to the emigration of Greek artists, who came to the German court to take refuge from the troubles of the East. The progress accomplished in this part of Europe shows itself in the drawing of the figures of a German Book of the Gospels of the beginning of the eleventh century, a work very superior to that of the Teutonic Book of the Gospels just referred to. The border of which we give a fac-simile in Fig. 357 shows also a certain degree of improvement; it is taken from a Book of the Gospels of the same period, preserved in the Royal Library, Munich.
Fig. 356.—Border taken from a Book of the Gospels in Latin, executed in England. (Tenth Century.)
Fig. 357.—Border taken from a Book of the Gospels of the beginning of the Eleventh Century. In the Royal Library, Munich.
But in France, to foreign invasions and to misfortunes of all kinds, which, since the death of Charlemagne, had afflicted the country, was added the terror caused by the general expectation that the world was coming to an end at the expiration of the first millennial. People were, therefore, otherwise employed than in ornamenting books. Accordingly, this epoch is one of the most barren in religious or other paintings. Fig. 358 represents the last degree of abasement in this art. Nothing in the world could be more barbarous, nor farther removed from all sentiment of the beautiful, and even from the instinctive idea of drawing. Ornamentation, however, remained sufficiently good, although under very heavy forms, as the Sacramentary of Æthelgar, which is preserved in the Library of Rouen, shows ([Fig. 359]). The decadency, however, seems to have come to a stop in France towards the end of the eleventh century, if we judge of the art from paintings, executed in 1060, and contained in a Latin manuscript, bearing the number 818, in the Imperial Library.
Fig. 358.—Miniature taken from a Missal of the Beginning of the Eleventh Century.
(Imperial Library, Paris, No. 821.)