"The painter, Alan Strayler, here is given.
Who dwells forever with the choir of heaven."
There are many other portraits of royal and noble personages, holding their respective donations. About thirty years afterward died an eccentric recluse, John Rous, called the hermit of Guy's Cliff. He was chantry-priest at a small chapel, founded by Guy, earl of Warwick, at Guy's Cliff, and from the austere solitary life he led there, acquired the appellation of the "hermit." He was an antiquary and an historian. He wrote a life of Richard Beauchamp, fourteenth earl of Warwick, and illustrated it with fifty-three large drawings, executed with a pen, which style of sketching in those days was called "tricking," or "drawing in trick." This MS. is still to be seen in the Cottonian collections. [Footnote 77]
[Footnote 77: Cotton MSS.—Julius, E iv. ]
Rous spent his time in the study of history and genealogy, and wrote and ornamented several manuscripts, one of which was a roll of the earls of Warwick. This is the last Englishman who is recorded to have attained to any excellence in the art of illumination. We must not omit some of the most prominent of foreign artists who distinguished themselves in this study, and in the thirteenth century Orderico, canon of Sienna, is mentioned as being one of the most renowned. Lanzi, in his History of Painting in Italy, [Footnote 78] gives a description of one of here's MSS., which is preserved in the library of the academy at Florence, decorated with initials, ornaments, and figures of animals, painted by him in 1213. The names of two celebrated illuminators are mentioned by Dante in his Divine Comedy.
[Footnote 78: Lanzi—Hist. of Painting, book ii., Siennese School.]
Oderigi d'Agubbio, whom Dante wrote of, was born at Agubbio, near Perugia, and died about the year 1300; he was the friend of Giotto and Dante at Rome. He was introduced by Giotto to Benedict VIII., for whom he illuminated many volumes. Francis of Bologna, the other mentioned by the poet, was also in the employ of Benedict, and executed many works for the Papal library. There is an account in Baldinucci of one Cybo, who lived in the fourteenth century, and is better known as the Monk of the Golden Islands, from his custom of retiring from his monastery at Lerino every spring and autumn to an island in the Mediterranean off the coast of France, for the wise purpose of the contemplation of nature. "He would walk abroad," we are informed, "not only to contemplate the beautiful prospects offered by the shores of those islands, the mountains, villages, and the sea itself, but also the birds, the flowers, the trees, the fruits, the rarer fishes of the sea, and the little animals of the earth, all of which he would draw and imitate in a wonderful manner." [Footnote 79]
[Footnote 79: Baldinucci—Notizie de' Professore del Disegno.]
Would that such an inspiration might steal over the minds of some of our modern artists! In 1433, according to Lanzi, flourished one Fra Giovanni da Fiesola, a Dominican friar, who attained to great fame as an illuminator. Then from the monastery of Degli Angeli came again another artist Dom Bartolommeo, abbot of St. Clement, who was a painter from youth. Vasari speaks of books and beautiful illustrations executed by him for the monks of Sante Flora and Lucilla in the Abbey of Arezzo, and in a missal given to Sixtus IV. Two great French illuminators come next up on the scene, one of whom, Andrieu de Beauneveu, is mentioned in the Chronicles of Froissart. [Footnote 80] One of his works, called Le Petit Psautier, was valued at eighty livres, about £120 of modern English money. Another of his works was The Great Hours of the Duke de Berri, fac-similes of which will be found in the works of Sylvestre and Noel Humphreys. [Footnote 81] He died in the year 1416, leaving a volume of Hours behind him unfinished, which was bought by the French government for 13,000 francs. The other French artist was Jean Foucquet, a native of Tours, who is spoken of as one of the glories of the fifteenth century. His principal works were the illumination of a book called L'Anciennrté des Juifs, and the Hours of Anne of Bretagne, two specimens of which may be found in Mr. Noel Humphrey's excellent work before alluded to. [Footnote 82] The greatest artist in the Italian miniature was Don Giulio Clovio, whose advent closes the history of the art in the fifteenth century. The incidents of his career may be found in Vasari; they are eventful; he was driven into a monastery in early life, when the Spaniards devastated Rome in 1527. He through up the cowl some years after by the Pope's permission, and went into the service of Cardinal Grimani, for whom he executed many of his best works. An office of the Virgin occupied him nine years in painting; it is still extant in the Musco Borbonico at Naples. He also illuminated a copy of Grimani's Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: this is now in the Soane Museum. In Sylvestre's Palaeography, [Footnote 83] is a copy of one of Clovio's miniatures from the MS. of Dante's Vision, now in the Vatican.
[Footnote 80: Chroniques de Floissart, vol. iv., p. 71, Lyons.]
[Footnote 81: Paléog. Univ., plate 195: Madden, ii. 544-7. Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages, plate xxi.]
[Footnote 82: Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages, plates xxxi. and xxxii.]
[Footnote 83: Sylvester—Paléog. Univ.. plate 162.]