To dwell upon Spanish illuminated manuscripts would be comparatively profitless to the practical student; for all the peculiarities and excellencies they would appear to have at any time possessed, may be found more perfectly developed at first in French, subsequently in Netherlandish, and ultimately in Italian volumes.[[73]] In one most remarkable and indeed historical volume, the actual alliance of Spanish writing and initial illumination with Flemish subject-painting and Arabesque is clearly to be recognized. The result of the union is certainly most happy, for few more beautiful books exist than the exquisite missal which in a passage of golden letters and honied words Francesco de Roias offers to Isabella "the Catholic." This magnificent volume, from which our plates (Technical Manual) Nos. [10], [11], and [12], have been taken, was purchased by the authorities of the British Museum, in whose catalogue it figures as add. 18,851, of Messrs. W. and T. Boone in 1852. In this work the brush triumphs over the pen, its decorations are essentially pictorial, and many of them recall, if not the hand, at least the style, of Memling and Van Eyck. Unlike volumes of earlier periods in which the illustrations are generally the work of one hand throughout, in this elaborate volume, a division of labour obtains. In this, as in many others of about the same period, not only are the penman and the painter two individuals, but the latter especially becomes half a dozen. This was, no doubt to a great extent, occasioned by the almost universal substitution of lay for clerical illuminators in the latter part of the 15th century, and by the production at that date of illuminated books for dealers adopting the principles and practice of that system of economic production which ultimately permitted manufacture to almost universally supersede Art throughout Europe. It remains now only to sketch, with a brevity altogether out of proportion to the great interest of the subject, the progress of the art in Italy.
If the delineation of naïve and graceful romantic incident, combined with elegant foliated ornament, reached perfection in the illuminations of the French school; if blazoning on gilded grounds was carried to its most gorgeous pitch in Oriental and Byzantine manuscripts; if intricate interlacements and minute elaboration may be regarded as the special characteristics of Hiberno-Saxon scribes; and if a noble tone of solid colour, combined with great humour and intense energy of expression, marked England's best productions,—it may be safely asserted, that it was reserved for the Italians to introduce into the embellishment of manuscripts those higher qualities of art, their peculiar aptitude for which so long gave them a pre-eminence among contemporaneous schools.
I therefore proceed to trace the names and styles of some few of the most celebrated among their illuminators; premising by a reminder to the student of the miserably low pitch to which art had been reduced in Italy during the 12th century. Even the most enthusiastic and patriotic writers agree in the all but total dearth of native talent. Greeks were employed to reproduce Byzantine mannerisms in pictures and mosaics, and to a slight extent no doubt as scribes. Illumination was scarcely known or recognized as an indigenous art; for Dante, even writing after the commencement of the 14th century, speaks of it as "quell' arte, che Alluminar è chiamata a Parisi."[[74]]
Probably the earliest Italian manuscript showing signs of real art, is the "Ordo Officiorum Senensis Ecclesiæ," preserved in the library of the academy at Sienna, and illuminated with little subjects and friezes with animals, by a certain Oderico, a canon of the cathedral, in the year 1213.
The Padre della Valle[[75]] expressly cautions the student against confounding this Odericus with the Oderigi of Dante,[[76]] who died about the year 1300. The latter was unquestionably an artist of some merit, for Vasari[[77]] speaks of him as an "excellente miniatore," whose works for the Papal library, although "in gran parte consumati dal tempo," he had himself seen and admired. Some drawings by the hand of this "valente uomo," as he is styled, Vasari speaks of possessing in his own collection.
Baldinucci makes out Oderigi to have been of the Florentine school on no other grounds than because Vasari describes him as "molto amico di Giotto in Roma;" and because Dante appears to have known him well. Lanzi,[[78]] however, more correctly classes him with the Bolognese school, from his teaching Franco Bolognese at Bologna, and on the strength of the direct testimony of one of the earliest commentators on Dante—Benvenuto da Imola. This same Franco worked much for Benedict IX., and far surpassed his master.
Vasari especially commends the spirit with which he drew animals, and mentions a drawing in his own possession of a lion tearing a tree as of great merit. Thus Oderigi, the contemporary of Cimabue, and Franco, the pupil of Oderigi and contemporary of Giotto, appear to have been to the Art of Illumination what Cimabue and his pupil Giotto were to the Art of Painting,—the pupil in both cases infinitely excelling the master. To them succeeded, about the middle of the 14th century, a scarcely less celebrated pair—Don Jacopo Fiorentino, and Don Silvestro, both monks in the Camaldolese monastery, "degli Angeli," at Florence. The former, Baldinucci tells us, "improving, with infinite study, every moment not devoted to his monastic duties, acquired a style of writing greatly sought after for choral books." The latter, who was rather an artist than a scribe, enriched the productions of his friend with miniatures so beautiful, as to cause the books thus jointly produced to excite, at a later period, the special admiration of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and his son, the no less magnificent Leo X.[[79]] So proud were their brother-monks of the skill of Frati Jacopo and Silvestro, that after their death they preserved their two right hands as honoured relics.
About a century later, the leading illuminators were Bartolomeo and Gherardo,—the former abbot of San Clemente, at Arrezzo, and the latter a Florentine painter and "miniatore," whom Vasari confounds with Attavante, a painter, engraver, and mosaicist. Of all the Italian artists who adopted the style of the illuminators, if they did not themselves illuminate, the most celebrated certainly are Fra Angelico da Fiesole[[80]] and Gentile da Fabriano. The majority of the works of both are little else than magnified miniatures of the highest merit.
The school of Siennese illumination was scarcely less distinguished than that of Florence. M. Rio dwells with enthusiasm on the books of the Kaleffi and Leoni, still preserved in the Archivio delle Riformazioni, and especially on those decorated by Nicolo di Sozzo, in 1334. The greatest master of the school, Simone Memmi,[[81]] the intimate friend of Petrarch, was himself an illuminator of extraordinary excellence, as may be seen by the celebrated Virgil of the Ambrosian Library at Milan, which contains, amongst other beautiful miniatures by his hand, the fine portrait of Virgil, and a very remarkable allegorical figure of Poetry, quite equal in artistic merit to any of the artist's larger and better-known works in fresco or tempera.[[82]]
It is, however, in the library of the cathedral at Sienna, which retains many of the magnificent choir-books executed by Fra Benedetto da Matera, a Benedictine of Monte Cassino, and Fra Gabriele Mattei of Sienna, that the greatest triumphs of the school are still to be recognized. This series of volumes, although much reduced from its original extent by the abstractions made by Cardinal Burgos, who carried off a vast quantity to Spain, is still the finest belonging to any capitular establishment in Italy, and worthily represents the grandeur of Italian illumination in "cinque cento" days.