RISE OF NATIONAL STYLES
The fourteenth century the true Golden Age of Gothic illumination--France the cradle of other national styles--Netherlandish, Italian, German, etc.--Distinction of schools--Difficulty of a.s.signing the _provenance_ of MSS.--The reason for it--MS. in Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge--The Padua Missal--Artists" names--Whence obtained.
Through the thirteenth century is the epoch of the Gothic renaissance, it is the fourteenth to which really belongs the t.i.tle of the Golden Age. The style of work remains precisely the same, only it grows. It changes from the bud to the leaf. It casts off the severity and much of the restraint of its earlier character. To the grace of youth it adds beauty, the beauty of adolescence. To fourteenth-century illumination we can give no higher praise than that it is beautiful. Not, indeed, because of its deliberate limitations, but in spite of them. For after ages have taught us that if in pure ornament and resplendent decorative completeness the pages of the fourteenth century cannot be surpa.s.sed, in miniature historiation it must take a second place. The skilled illuminators of the later schools are the masters of the mere picture.
For surely no judge of art could possibly a.s.sert that the miniatures of the Grunani Breviary or of the Brera Graduals as miniatures are inferior to those of the Psalter of St. Louis, the Berry Bible, or the Prayer-book of Margaret of Bavaria. Yet these are typical MSS. of the highest rank. Hence we say that while the illumination of the Golden Age of the art was beautiful, it was not absolutely perfect. It is not to be taken by modern students as the only possible model or basis simply because it was the best of its kind. There is no such despotism in art.
To those who think it the only possible form of book decoration, let it be so by all means, but we may as well hope to clothe our soldiers in chain or plate armour, and send the elite of our n.o.bility on another crusade to Jerusalem, or satisfy our universities with the _quod libets_ and _quiddities_ of the _trivium_ and _quadrivium_, as hope to make popular to the England of the twentieth century the artistic tastes of the fourteenth. We indulge in no such dreams. If we are to have illuminated books, our own age must invent them. The illuminators of the Bibles, Romances, Mirrors, and Chronicles of the fourteenth century no doubt did their best, and we honour and praise them for it. We think their work among the loveliest gratifications of the eye that can be imagined. But the eye is very catholic--it has immense capacities for enjoyment. The window of the soul opens on illimitable prospects, and if the soul be satisfied for the time, it is not necessarily repleted for ever. Golden ages are cyclical, and it may be that the glory of the books of the future shall surpa.s.s all the glories of the past.
By 1350 France had absorbed all the antecedent varieties of illumination. From France, therefore, spring all the succeeding styles now considered national.
And as is most natural, these styles develop by proximity--the nearest to French being Netherlandish. The next, as a result of immediate intercourse, Italian. Then German, Spanish, and the rest, as intercourse gave opportunity. It is not always an easy matter to say offhand whether a MS. is French or Flemish. In the earlier days it is not easy to say whether it be French or English, or even whether French or Italian. But the distinctness comes later on.
In the fifteenth century the Italian, German, French, and English are quite distinct varieties. Towards the sixteenth the Netherlandish is quite as distinct. But the styles of Spain, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, though possessing features which identify them to an experienced eye, are to the ordinary spectator merely sub-varieties of Netherlandish, Italian, or German.
With regard to the distinctions of schools or local centres within the same country, the evidence of probable origin has to be corroborated by historic fact. It is not safe without further proof than that afforded by general features to affirm that this or that MS. was executed at Paris, Dijon, Amiens, or Limoges in France; or at Ghent, Bruges, or elsewhere in Flanders; or whether a MS. be Rhenish or Saxon, Bavarian or Westphalian, in Germany; Bolognese, Florentine, Siennese, Milanese, or Neapolitan in Italy; or executed at Westminster, St. Albans, Exeter, or elsewhere in England. Nevertheless the special characteristics of all these schools are quite distinguishable. In the attempt to distinguish them, although the diagnosis may be perfectly accurate, the actual facts may be otherwise accounted for. Hence the danger to which even the experienced connoisseur is liable. For example, certain MSS. are written in a fine Bolognese hand, which it is proved were actually executed in Flanders; others that one would feel sure were Netherlandish, were illuminated in Spain. Some very fine typical Flemish miniatures were painted in Italy; certain Florentine miniatures were the work of artists residing in Rome. Milanese illumination is quite distinguishable from Neapolitan, and Venetian from both, yet the school is not proof of the _provenance_.
Illuminators, like other craftsmen, travelled from city to city, and princes employed men, who resided in their patrons" palaces, who yet had learned their art many leagues away. How often we find the names of artists with the words Dallemagna, il Tedesco, le Poitevin, Veronese, Franco, Crovata, etc., employed in Italian houses, indicating the place of their nativity. So that even when we know every feature of the work we have much to learn ere we can say with truth that it was executed in such and such a city. We must take into account details which are liable to escape the ordinary observer, such as quality of vellum or paper, choice of pigments, mode of application, and other particulars quite distinct from style of ornament or varieties of form in foliage. In the Fitzwilliam Library at Cambridge is an Italian MS., the characteristics of whose ornamentation are unequivocally French, but whose mode of treatment shows not only that it is Italian but that it is Milanese, but whether executed in Milan or not is more than anyone can affirm. In the British Museum is a magnificent service-book called the Padua Missal, but the probability is that the Paduan artist who painted its splendid pages, painted them at Venice. That it was executed for Sta. Justina, at Padua, is no proof that the work was done in that city.
In monastic times we have seen why the artist rarely signed his name.
After the thirteenth century the lay artist had no such scruples, and hence we often find particulars of origin and purpose which explain all we wish to know. But if the MSS. themselves do not contain the particulars, very often the account-books of cathedrals and other establishments for which the books were illuminated, give the details of price and purpose, and add the names of the artists. The household expense books, guild books, munic.i.p.al records, and the journals of the painters themselves are fertile sources of information. And if we seek with sufficient diligence these will probably be the means by which it may eventually be found.
CHAPTER III
FRENCH ILLUMINATION FROM THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY TO THE RENAISSANCE
Ivy-leaf and chequered backgrounds--Occasional introduction of plain burnished gold--Reign of Charles VI. of France--The Dukes of Orleans, Berry, and Burgundy; their prodigality and fine taste for MSS.--Christine de Pisan and her works--Description of her "Mutation of Fortune" in the Paris Library--The "Roman de la Rose" and "Cite des Dames"--Details of the French style of illumination--Burgundian MSS., Harl. 4431--Roy. 15 E. 6--The Talbot Romances--Gradual approach to Flemish on the one hand and Italian on the other.
In addition to the expanding ivy leaf which forms the chief feature of fourteenth-century book-ornament, we find the miniaturist as a further improvement adding delicate colour in the faces. Also that instead of the invariable lozenging or diapering of the background he occasionally makes a background of plain burnished gold. And as if to prove that his predecessors were really hampered with the restrictions imposed by their imitations of painted gla.s.s, he begins to try his best to paint up his miniatures into real pictures with high lights on draperies and shading upon the folds. A certain amount of flatness, however, still remains, but it scarcely seems to have been the intention or aim of the painter.
There is a similar flatness in the work of all the early schools of painting, which had no reference whatever to the destination of the picture. See, for instance, the Origny Treasure Book in the Print Room at Berlin (MS. 38), and the Life of St. Denis in the National Library at Paris (Nos. 2090-2), both MSS. dating somewhere about 1315. The drapery shading in the latter MS. is no longer the work of the pen, but brush-work in proper colour. The Westreenen Missal in the Museum at the Hague, which dates about 1365, though not a French MS., is an example of the fact that by the middle of the century the tradition of penwork outline and flat-colouring had become pretty nearly obsolete.
The reign of the afflicted Charles VI. of France, disastrous in the extreme to the material welfare of his own subjects, full of untold misery to the poor, and of oppression to the growing community of artisans and traders, was nevertheless, as regards literature and the arts, a period of progress and even splendour. The King"s incapacity, by affording his uncles and brothers opportunities for fingering the revenues during the self-appointed and irresponsible regencies, enabled them to gratify their magnificent tastes in the purchasing of costly furniture and the ordering of splendid books. Louis of Orleans, usually credited with the worst of this prodigality, was by no means singular in his conduct. His uncle, the Duke of Berry, while daily earning the execrations of the tax-payers by his unscrupulous employment of the public money, was constantly enriching his library, and both he and his brothers and nephews were in the habit of sending priceless volumes, illuminated by the best artists, as wedding and birthday gifts, to each other, or their wives or acquaintances. We talk, and justly, of the fine taste and n.o.ble love of literature of Jean de Berry. His contemporaries, at least those beneath his own rank, looked upon him as a tyrant and plunderer. His disastrous administration of Languedoc was described as "one long fete where the excess of expenditure was rivalled only by the excess of scandal." If the _marmousets_ could have hanged him they would. In default they hanged his treasurer.
All this maladministration was very wrong, but we cannot afford to burn the MSS. in consequence, for the Bible, the "Grandes Heures," and other books once possessed by the wicked Duke, are among the most precious relics of any age. Add to them the beautiful volumes of poetry and romance composing the contemporary literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and we have treasures that we dare not relinquish.
By the beginning of the fifteenth century pure French illumination was losing its own characteristics and acquiring others. In the North, in Flanders and Brabant, Franche-Comte and the Burgundian Dukedom generally, it was becoming that peculiar kind of French which had received the name of Burgundian. It can scarcely be said to be Flemish enough to rank as Netherlandish, yet neither can it stand side by side with "French of Paris."
Let us look at a few examples. There is the Book of Offices in the Library of St. Genevieve at Paris (Bibl. Lat. 66), also the St.
Augustine in the same library. Also a small crowd of volumes in the Royal Library at Brussels, another in the National Library at Paris. One of the richest examples known is the "Psalter of the Convent of Salem,"
in the University Library at Heidelberg. Other grand MSS. are the two volumes of the "Mutacion de Fortune" of Christine de Pisan and the "Cite des Dames" of the same auth.o.r.ess. The volume of her poems, etc., in the British Museum, is a marvellously fine work (Harl. 4431). The greater part of this volume is in the earlier or "Berry" style, _i.e._ the fine pen-sprays of ivy leaf of burnished gold. But the first grand border is altogether transitional, consisting of the pen-sprays of golden ivy leaf alternating with sprays of natural flowers. This innovation, it has been said, was due to the school of van Eyck, but as no proof is forthcoming that J. van Eyck ever worked on illuminating we may be content to say that it arose about 1413, and that probably it came from Bruges. It is the beginning of the Burgundian style. But the ornamental leaf.a.ge is different from ordinary Brugeois, inasmuch as it is "pearled" along the central veins, and is not symmetrical. The pearling is perhaps a suggestion from gla.s.s painting. It was very early adapted in German foliage work. On the first fly-leaf are several signatures, including the name and device of Louis Gruthuse: "Plus est en vous Gruthuse." The miniatures still remain French with mostly panelled backgrounds, some with landscape. It is evidently a transitional doc.u.ment.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PSALTERM. ET OFFICIA 14TH CENT.
_Brit. Mus. Harl. MS. 2897, fol. 184_]
[Ill.u.s.tration: HEURES, ETC.
14TH CENT.
_Brit. Mus. Harl. MS. 2952, fol. 22_]
The works of Christine de Pisan, the popular--one may fairly say fashionable--auth.o.r.ess, were perhaps among the best known and most widely read while Caxton was setting up his press at Westminster, as she was among the most welcome guests at the Courts of Charles VI. and Philip of Burgundy. She was the daughter of a distinguished Venetian savant, Thomas de Pisan, who had come at the invitation of Charles le Sage to Paris as "Astrologue du Roi." At the age of fifteen Christine, who was as beautiful as she was accomplished, became the wife of a Picard gentleman named Estienne Castel. Two years afterwards the death of the King brought trouble upon her father, and with it sickness and despondency. Then followed sorrow upon sorrow. Whilst she was herself still burdened with the cares of early motherhood her father died, and within nine years from her marriage the sudden death from contagion, of her husband, to whom she was most fondly attached, left her a widow with two little children dependent upon her, and with only what she herself could earn as a means of livelihood. She was not yet twenty-six years old. To a.s.suage her misery she betook herself to study and the composition of essays and poetry. Her works speedily brought her the recognition of distinguished personages; her children were provided for, and she herself soon acquired both fortune and reputation. Charles VI.
allowed her a pension, and she composed for his Queen, Isabella of Bavaria, several important treatises. Among her numerous compositions were "Les cens Histoires de Troyes" in verse, "Le Chemin de longue estude", "La Mutacion de Fortune," and a Life of Charles V., the latter composed at the request of Philip the Good of Burgundy. But the work which sets off her wit and learning to the best advantage was an allegorical essay on Womanhood, which she called "Le Tresor de la Cite des Dames." Altogether her works include fifteen books and about sixty smaller writings, which she dedicated to the King and Queen of France, the Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans, and the princesses and princes of the Court.
One beautifully illuminated copy of the Mutation of Fortune in two volumes is a curious example of its t.i.tle, for one volume of it is in the National Library at Paris (fonds fr. 603) and the other in the Royal Library at Munich. In the former we have her portrait. In a blue gown she sits at her writing-desk busy at her work. On her head is the muslin-draped and high-peaked "hennin." Beside her a table covered with a green cloth and laden with crimson and violet-bound books and an inkstand. Her chair has a high back, and the floor is of the usual kind seen in illuminations; that is, as if composed of a parquetry of coloured woodwork or of tiles of various kinds of marble. On the sill of the Gothic-latticed window, through which we catch a glimpse of the blue sky, stands a vase of flowers. Not perhaps an ideal lady"s boudoir, but still an apartment of taste, and an altogether charming little picture.
In the second miniature of the Munich volume Christine is standing in a chamber--in the same costume as above described. The pictures on the walls are--a fortress, a watchman, two knights, a prince with crown and sceptre, seated on his throne, surrounded by courtiers; a duel; and a martyr having his head struck off. Just such mediaeval subjects as we may expect in a fifteenth-century mansion.
In a copy of the "Cite des Dames" at Munich is another portrait of Christine. The book is an Apology for the feminine s.e.x, and it is well thought out. It appears that the conversation of the time was not always free from rather severe sarcasm concerning the ladies. We learn from Du Verdier that the continuator of the Romance of the Rose narrowly escaped most condign chastis.e.m.e.nt from some of the insulted s.e.x at the French Court for the base insinuations in his poem against the character of women. Christine herself heartily disapproved of the Romance of the Rose, and wrote a sharp criticism upon it. Her "Cite des Dames" is an elaborate confutation of the opinion that women are naturally more immoral and less capable of n.o.ble studies or high intellectual attainments than men. In her introduction she says: "I reflected why men are so unanimous in attributing wickedness to women. I examined my own life and those of other women to learn why we should be worse than men, since we also were created by G.o.d. I was sitting ashamed with bowed head and eyes blinded with tears, resting my chin on my hands in my elbow-chair, when a dazzling beam of Light flashed before me, which came not from the sun, for it was late in the evening. I glanced up and saw standing before me three female figures wearing crowns of gold, and with radiant countenances. I crossed myself, whereupon one of the three addressed me. "Fear not, dear daughter, for we will counsel and help thee. The aphorisms of the Philosophers are not Articles of Faith, but simply the mists of error and self-deception."" The three ladies or G.o.ddesses are Fame, Prudence, and Justice, and they command Christine under the supervision of Reason (or Commonsense) to build a city for the n.o.blest and best of her own s.e.x. So the city was begun, and the elect, allegorically, let into it. In varied ranks following one another came G.o.ddesses and saintly women, Christian and heathen women--among them walks as leader the Queen of the Amazons. "Queen" Ceres, who taught the art and practice of agriculture. Queen Isis, who first led mankind to the cultivation of plants. Arachne, who invented the arts of dyeing, weaving, flax-growing, and spinning. Damphile, who discovered how to breed silkworms. Queen Tomyris, who vanquished Cyrus. The n.o.ble Sulpicia, who shared her husband"s exile, and many others, among whom may be seen Dame Sarah, the wife of Abraham, Penelope, Ruth, and the Saints Katharine, Margaret, Lucia, and Dorothea. In the first miniature on the left sits Christine with a coif upon her head and a great book on her lap; on her left hand is the plan of her new city, while opposite stand the three ladies already spoken of as her advisers, furnished with building tools and giving her their advice. On the right she appears again in elegant costume with hewn stones and a trowel a.s.sisted by two workmen who are busily at work. Before her is an unfinished wall and several completed towers. In two other miniatures the gradual progress and entire completion of the city are shown, and in the foreground of each Christine and her three patronesses as before. Other examples deserving of extended notice are the Shrewsbury Romances (Roy. 15 E. 6) and Augustine, Cite de Dieu (Roy. 14 D. 1), two great folios, the former most interesting for its miniatures--the latter as a fair example of the rougher kind of Lille work, bold in design, good drawing. The choice of colours includes marone, blue, green, and gold. The ornaments, as usual, consist of sprays of ivy leaf and grounds filled in with treillages of natural flowers, among which are the daisy, viola tricolor, thistle, cornbottle, and wild stock. Fruits and vegetables also, as grapes, field peas, and strawberries. The miniatures include a few rather coa.r.s.e grisailles.
A little volume (Harl. 2936) contains exquisitely drawn Brugeois scrolls in monochrome on grounds of the same colour or plain gold or black.
Lastly we may mention "Les Heures de la Dame de Saluces," otherwise called the "Yemeniz Hours," in the British Museum (Add. 27967), a large octavo, as an example of transitional Burgundian. Here the secondary borders have mostly the penwork ivy leaf with Brugeois corners and with strawberries, etc., in the midst of the sprays. Among the foliages grotesque figures frequently appear. The princ.i.p.al pages, however, are more like Harl. 4431, yet without the ivy-leaf tendrils. The miniatures are still Gothic, but richer and deeper in colour than ordinary French work. It would appear that two different artists were employed--one decidedly French, the other Netherlandish, and of a more individual character, still with French accessories. Every page has a border of some kind. Among the flowers the thistle is peculiar in having a golden cup next the down. The work generally resembles, in some parts, 4431 Harl.; in others, and perhaps more strongly, 15 E. 6. The colours are chiefly blue, scarlet, rose-pink, green, and gold.
We have now pretty nearly worked our way into Flemish illumination. The after-history of French as developed through the influence of Italy on the schools of Paris and Tours must have a chapter to itself.
CHAPTER IV
ENGLISH ILLUMINATION FROM THE TENTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Organisation of the Monastic _scriptoria_--Professional outsiders: lay artists--The whole sometimes the work of the same pract.i.tioner--The Winchester Abbeys of St. Swithun"s and Hyde--Their vicissitudes--St.
Alban"s--Westminster--Royal MS. 2 A. 22--Description of style--The Tenison Psalter--Features of this period--The Arundel Psalter--Hunting and shooting scenes, and games--Characteristic pictures, grotesques, and caricatures--Queen Mary"s Psalter--Rapid changes under Richard II.--Royal MS. 1 E. 9--Their cause.
In a former chapter we left our native schools of illumination at work on such MSS. as the Devonshire and Rouen Benedictionals, and with the reputation of being the best schools of the kind in Christendom. Mention also is made elsewhere in dealing with monastic art of the usages of the _scriptoria_. Such usages, of course, could only obtain in houses where scribes themselves were to be had. Hence we should discover, were it not otherwise known, that writing and illumination, even in the monastic age, were not confined absolutely to the cloister.
With respect to the secular scribes, who sometimes worked in the monastery, sometimes at their own homes, in those days when the monastic orders still did most of the book-production, there were three cla.s.ses of specialists. These were the _Librarii_ or ordinary copyists; the _Notarii_ or law-scribes, whose business lay in copying deeds, charters, and such-like instruments, and taking notes in the courts; and _Paginators_ or _Illuminatores_. It sometimes happened, as we have said, that in some monastery or other, no monastic was found qualified to undertake any of these duties. It then fell to the prior or abbat to seek the a.s.sistance of professional outsiders. The paging and rubrication, putting in initials in the s.p.a.ces left by the common scribe, and, if needed, the addition of pictures or marginal drawings and ornaments, caricatures, heraldic ill.u.s.trations, etc., were the proper work of the illuminator, but it often happened that the same man had to do the whole work from the commencement to the finish. The Chronicon Trudonense tells us: "Graduale unum propria manu formavit, purgavit, pinxit, sulcabit, scripsit, illuminavit, musiceque notavit syllabatim." Several of our old English chronicles, of which the MSS.
exist in the British Museum and elsewhere, seem to be of this description.
Reference has been made to the _scriptoria_ at Winchester, _i.e._ at St.
Swithun"s and the New Minster. It is the latter foundation which is usually referred to in speaking of Winchester work. The Monastery of the Holy Trinity or the New Minster was founded in the first year of his reign by King Edward, son of Alfred, no doubt in obedience to his father"s wish, if not absolutely in the terms of his will. Its first charter is dated 900 (for 901) and the second in 903. In the latter doc.u.ment the abbey is spoken of as dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and to St. Peter, and is amply endowed under the Augustinian Rule. In 965, not without trouble and resistance, it was converted into a Benedictine abbey. In 968 Ethelgar, who had been trained at Glas...o...b..ry and Abingdon, became abbat, and from this time the New Minster became famous for both discipline and the production of MSS. As we walk along the High Street of Winchester now we find the story in moss-grown stones or other memorials how, among other methods, William the Norman punished the monks for their English warlike proclivities by walling them up nearly close to their church with the walls of his royal palace. In the old time, when the two monasteries stood side by side--St. Swithun"s is close behind the New Minster--"so closely packed together," says the old chronicler,[37] "were the two communities of St. Swithun and St. Peter that between the foundation of their respective buildings there was barely room for a man to pa.s.s along. The choral service of one monastery conflicted with that of the other, so that both were spoiled, and the ringing of their bells together produced a horrid discord." The result of this was, first the above-mentioned hemming in of the younger establishment and eventually its migration to another site in Hyde Meadow. Here while the monastic buildings suffered much through fires and other disasters, the Rule remained until 1538, when it was surrendered into the King"s hands, and the abbat, prior, and nineteen monks, the last survivors of this once-famous foundation, were pensioned.
[37] Dugdale, _Monasticon_.
The scriptorium at St. Alban"s, to which the fame of book production in the Middle Ages very largely reverted, was not founded until nearly three centuries after the foundation of that abbey. The library began with twenty-eight notable volumes, and eight Psalters, a book of collects, another of epistles, and _Evangelia legenda per annum_, two Gospel-books bound in gold and silver and set with gems, together with other necessary volumes for ordinary use. Almost every succeeding abbat contributed something to the library shelves. Geoffrey, the sixteenth abbat, a Norman who once had a school at Dunstable, and who was both a popular and liberal ruler, enriched the library with a Missal bound in gold, another incomparably illuminated and beautifully written, and also a Psalter richly illuminated, a Benedictional, and others. His successor, Ralph Gubiun, also gave a number of MSS. Robert de Gosham, the next abbat, gave "very many" books, which he had caused to be written and sumptuously bound for the purpose. And Abbat Simon, who followed in 1166, created the office of historiographer to the abbey, repaired and enlarged the scriptorium, and kept two or three of the cleverest writers constantly employed in transcription, and ordained that for the future every abbat should maintain at least one suitable and capable scribe. Among the many choice MSS. added by Abbat Simon was a beautiful copy of the Bible specially written with the greatest care and exactness. In addition he presented the library with all his own precious collection. Another liberal benefactor was John de Cell, a man of vast learning in grammar and poetry, and also a pract.i.tioner in medicine. Being unfit for household management, he committed the secular affairs of the abbey to his prior Reymund, by whose zeal many n.o.ble and valuable books were transcribed for the library. And so grew in magnitude and importance the great collection which supplied Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris with materials for their famous histories.
St. Alban"s, indeed, was at one period perhaps the most noted of all the English centres of book production. To dilate on other centres, such as Westminster, Exeter, Worcester, Norwich, or York, would lead us too far afield for a mere handbook like the present. Enough has been said to give a good idea of what our English abbats and priors were in the habit of doing for art and letters.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PSALTERIUM c.u.m CANTICIS A.D. 1240 _Brit. Mus. Roy. MS. 2, A. xxii, fol. 14_]
[Ill.u.s.tration: EPISTRE AU ROY RICH. 2 C. 1375 _Brit. Mus. Roy. MS. 20 B, vi, fol. 1_]
Since 980 a considerable quant.i.ty of transcription and illumination must have been produced, notwithstanding disquiet, turbulence, and war. At Westminster the traditions of illumination seem to have followed the methods of the earlier Winchester school. But in the twelfth century English work shows, on the whole, a greater likeness to the contemporary work of Germany. Of Westminster work an example occurs among the Royal MSS. (2 A. 22). The subject is the Psalter, and the text is the handsome style of penmanship known as English Gothic of the latter part of the twelfth century. It would appear from the frequent occurrence of this particular service-book that it held the place of the later Book of Hours, and so we may expect a great similarity among different copies, both in the selection of the ill.u.s.trations and their mode of treatment.
It was usual in all such volumes to prefix to the text a series of subjects from the Old and New Testaments and the Lives of the Saints.
Here we have them from the Life of the Virgin and from the Life of David, by no means unworthy samples of the school. One represents the Virgin and Child seated on a seat of the Germano-Byzantine type beneath an arch and within a square frame-border. The border seems first to have been flatly painted in two colours, pale blue and pale red ochre, and on this a foliage scroll of recurring forms in a bold dull red outline finely relieved with white. This is more or less repeated as the form of border to the other illuminations. Outside the whole is a characteristic slender frame of bright green in two tints. The arch overhead has two bands of vermilion, with white edge-reliefs and a central band of blue, again in two tints, with pairs of black cross-bars every half-inch or so resting on the capitals of the two pillars which form the sides of the scene. These pillars have each a green abacus at the top of each capital and scarlet bead below. Each pillar is of dappled red, marble-like porphyry, with plinths of scarlet and blue. Tiers of differently coloured steps separated by bands of scarlet, green, etc., form the seat. The Virgin wears the hood, cape, and robe of the Benedictine nun, but coloured grey, chocolate, and blue respectively. An under garment of pale amber completes her dress. The infant wears an amber tunic, wrapped in a scarlet robe. A very common embroidery of the drapery consists of little stars or triads of white studs. This also is a characteristic of German and early Netherlandish illumination. There is a rich gold brocade border to the blue robe of the Virgin. Both mother and child have round nimbuses, the former in plain circular bands of russet and orange, the latter consisting of bands of pale blue surmounted by a scarlet cross. Two lumps of green gla.s.s or metal hang from the arch. The background is a plate of gold. The flesh tones are livid, being of a pale greenish ochre tint. One other of the illuminations of this exceedingly interesting MS. may be mentioned, viz. the David playing his harp. He also wears three garments--a tunic of white shaded with pale blue, then another of lavender or lilac and having rich brocaded borders, and, lastly, a pallium or robe of pale chocolate lined with ermine; orange-coloured hose. The throne, like the previous one, is of several colours--slate-blue, green, orange, and white, with a buff cushion. Here is a back to the throne of a deep blue, with a background, as before, of bright flat gold. The white moulding is shaded with pale green, with bluish slate corners. The outer border is of the pale red ochre or pink, so common in later work in contrast with deep blue. An outer frame or edging of green completes the page. The harp is not gilded, but of a drab hue, with two quatrefoil studs or orifices in the frame, relieved as usual with fine edges of white. Compare this MS. with one in the Library at Lambeth.
The English illumination of the thirteenth century is so like that of France that it is often difficult to determine its real nationality.
There is occasionally some feature which we know from other sources to be English, or some circ.u.mstance in the history of the MS. which fixes its origin, as, for example, in the Additional MS. 24686, known as the Tenison Psalter. Sir E.M. Thompson also describes this MS. in the _Bibliographica_, i. 397. But it was previously described at some length by Sir Edward Bond in the Fine Arts _Quarterly Review_. The Psalter, which has had a somewhat eventful history, is one of the best examples of English thirteenth-century illumination. At least, this may be said of the early portion of it, for while it is illuminated throughout, only the first gathering is in the earlier manner. The peculiar value to the student lies in the fact that although quite in the same style as contemporary French work, it is the work of an English illuminator. The colouring, however, is not confined, as in somewhat earlier examples, to blue and dull pale rose or paled red ochre and gold. It gives us scarlet, crimson-lake, green, and brown, besides the blue and pink and bright gold which suggests some German influences. The line fillings are somewhat peculiar as having silver tracery, on the blue, side by side with golden tracery on the crimson. The full ivy leaf appears in the long branch work of the borders, and some of the initials still retain the bird or dragon forms in their construction. The compound bar-frame, gold and traceried colour side by side, is however already taking the place of the mere sweeping tail or branch. But perhaps the best indication of English design is the presence of a number of grotesque animals, with birds and occasional humorous scenes disposed, not in framed miniatures, but simply among the stems and coils of the foliage.