End of the Fifteenth Century

       We now reach the last decade of the fifteenth century; in which the late Flemish school already alluded to arose in Bruges and Ghent. In combination with those beautiful borders of fresh cut flowers painted in apparent relief upon pale gold or yellow, the delicate art of Memling and Gerard David produced small and exquisite miniatures with architectural and landscape accessories; the like of which had not yet been seen in the illustration of books, unless we find a parallel in the lovely and no less exquisite pictures in Florentine manuscripts of the same period. The radical difference between the work of the north and that of the south notwithstanding that each of them betrays to some extent the influence of the other is, that the Fleming took his types from real life, the Florentine from his conceptions of angelic existence.

       All the rest of Europe was behind the two favored countries in which pictorial and decorative art now reached their culminating point. Sentimental writers have been, from time immemorial, in the habit of scouting at wealth and of pouring enthusiastic praise upon penury, as though the two conditions were equivalent to vice and virtue in morals, to dullness and genius in intellect. It is quite true that an impoverished state of society produces better poetry than a rich one; but it is equally true that the finest artistic work is born amid luxurious surroundings. It was the wealth of Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, and Brussels which attracted talent to a warmer air in which it could grow and flourish, on the border land between the Celt and the Teuton, with all the advantages derivable from either side. In the same way the riches and luxury of Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Verona, Cremona, Padua, stimulated the faculties of men who had inherited the traditions of Grasco-Roman art. It was a brilliant autumn in the annals of illumination, but a short one, by reason of the changes which the new art of Printing had brought about in all things. Durer visited Bruges and Venice; he admired the work of Gerard David and of the Italian miniaturists, but he did not seek to imitate or to rival their efforts. He belonged to the modern world, and he gave to the art of engraving what he would, twenty years earlier, have given to the art of illumination. We have nothing to do here with his profession as a painter of canvases in which he followed the same tendency as had during the fifteenth century so wonderfully multiplied the number of Giotto's descendants in Italy. We may imagine, if we choose, what wonderful illuminators of manuscripts were lost in Schongauer, Durer, and Lucas van Ley den, three men who owed their artistic existence and taste to the atmosphere of rich cities. From the year 1450 the career of Calligrapher and Illuminator had been doomed to extinction. Its members gradually retired from an unequal strife with the clever mechanics from Mentz; some became printers, some became engravers, and others joined the ranks of the canvas-painters. Those who remained true to their early training achieved the most brilliant triumphs of their profession before it was extinguished. This is the reason why we look to the Flanders, and to the Italy of 1480-1520, for the most absolutely perfect work that was ever produced in the illumination of manuscripts. Considering that it flourished side by side with the paintings of the Bellinis and of Andrea Mantegna, and that it was in touch with the times of Lionardo, of Raphael, of Michel Angelo, of Titian, and of Paolo Veronese, we cannot wonder either at its marvellous beauty or at its sudden withering.

       Of the late Flemish school, certain work done for the Austrian Archduchess Margaret (resident in Bruges with her brother Philip, as children of Maximilian who had become sovereign of the Low Countries in right of his wife Mary of Burgundy), of which the famous Grimani Breviary is only one amongst some ten or twelve examples was the finest of its kind. The present writer has possessed one of them a little volume internally justifying the tradition that it was illuminated by Gerard David for the Archduchess

(. . Margot la gente demoiselle

Qu' eut deux maris et si mourut pucelle

as she once suggested for her own epitaph when in danger from a storm at sea) for presentation to her sister-in-law Juana, the heiress of Castile ( Juana la Loca, the Crazy Jane who has become a personage in nursery lore).

       As for the Italian school, it was of wider extent. The illuminators found generous patrons at Milan, at Venice, at Padua, at Cremona, at Verona, at Florence, at Bologna, at Rome, and at Naples. In the last city, the Kings of Aragonese origin were noble employers of talent, and found their chief rivals in the Medicis, and in Mathias Corvintis, the King of Hungary, who divided with them the patronage of the best Italian miniaturists. They also helped to stamp on Spanish work the Italian impress which characterises it in the last half of the fifteenth century, and thereby to continue the line which in contact with Naples on the one hand, with Bruges on the other, formed at the end of the century a ring, uniting Flanders and Italy as its chief jewels.

       The name of Attavante, so famous as a Florentine miniaturist, reminds me of a Petrarch manuscript which I have seen sold in Paris as illustrated by him. One of the illuminations contained a bust of a Roman warrior, in the style so frequently seen in Italian work of about the year 1500, and under it were the initials M.A., intended evidently for Marcus Aurelius or Marcus Antonius. Out of them, the cataloguers of two different collections of great repute, had evolved the idea that they stood for " Maestro Attavante" an absurd notion for which there was absolutely no excuse whatever. Other famous Italian miniaturists were Girolamo dai Libri of Verona, and Sigismondo da Carpio. I have had examples of the art of both. One still more celebrated was Giulio Clovio, but he belonged entirely to the sixteenth century and to the late Renaissance, and his work is in nowise that of the Middle Ages. It is over-florid and reveals the theatrical splendor which always accompanies decline. I have possessed one of his finest examples, which was formerly in the Towneley library.

       During the last twenty years of the fifteenth century, a favorite style of border among the Italians was an imitation of goldsmith's work. Gems of various colors set in gold, with cameos or medallions of classic busts, were the chief feature, but spaces were always left in which the miniaturist could paint his tiny exquisite figures of the fight between David and Goliath, or something, of the kind. Venetian examples of such miniatures are remarkably beautiful the beauty mingled with a certain gravity of manner; those which are of Koman origin have an air of masterly splendor; but those which were produced at Florence between 1480 and 1510 are so lovely as to upset our critical judgment in comparing them with work done at Bruges. In the border-illustration there never was any resemblance between the work of Italy and that of other countries, and there can be no hesitation in deciding between them in favor of Italy as more appropriately decorative.

       I possess a Psalter written and illuminated for Pietro dei Medici, apparently about 1490, in which the first two pages are stained light green, so as to soften and make delicate the numerous tints found in the painting and border upon one of them. These are the work probably of Attavante, and can hardly be excelled for the exquisite taste and finish both of the miniature and of the ornamentation. I have also had a charming little Prayerbook written for Lorenzo the Magnificent, which was evidently from the same hand; and a Siennese Psalter of kindred type and of the same period. The loveliness of these Tuscan examples takes away all possibility of critical fault-finding. They delight the eye with a fuller satisfaction than even the best of the Flemish illuminations. The latter we examine carefully, with a continual increase of admiration; while we enjoy the harmonious beauty of the Florentine, we feel that the critic's functions are set aside.

plate 12. "The Italic was still in its primitive stage without elegance, and some books were written in a gothic letter derived from French and German models, and quite unlike the square Italian gothic. The script of the book, from which a facsimile is given on plate 12, is an example of this outlandishness."

       The writing of the late Italian MSS., among which classical texts rival the books of prayers in the elegance of their adornment, was more frequently Roman than gothic, but a fine black-letter hand survived into the sixteenth century, especially at Venice. The initials decorated with interlacements, in a style that evinced its Irish origin, which are found in Italian manuscripts after 1350 were retained till near the end of the fifteenth century in Venice and Naples, but they had fallen out of use in Tuscany somewhat earlier, being hardly appropriate to the rich neo-classical style of Florentine border-decoration.

       As for the Italian styles of writing after the twelfth century, they were various. The Carolingian in a bold and handsome type lasted longer in Italy than elsewhere; but both it and the Lombard were passing away about the year 1200. The thirteenth century saw the evolution of the gothic letter out of the Carolingian, in Italy as well as over the rest of Europe, but in Italy it was accompanied by a sort of Carolingian cursive, slightly sloped, which finally developed the two forms now familiar over all the world Roman and Italic. In the fourteenth century a beautiful square gothic letter was in use in Italy, and remained unaltered in form till the end of the fifteenth; but it was not unaccompanied by various other styles of writing. The Italic was still in its primitive stage without elegance, and some books were written in a gothic letter derived from French and German models, and quite unlike the square Italian gothic. The script of the book, from which a facsimile is given on plate 12, is an example of this outlandishness. Before the fifteenth century arrived the cursive hand had split into its two branches. The more elaborately written letters were upright, and tended to restore the Carolingian original ; the less elaborate characters began to slope still further, and by degrees became a separate script, which then became cultivated. The writing of Petrarch (who died in 1374) was chosen as the model for the first Italic types used in printing (1501); and the upright round hand used by numerous Florentine and Venetian calligraphers towards the middle of the fifteenth century was chosen as the model of the first Roman types, cut by Sweynheym and Pannartz in the Benedictine monastery of Subbiaco, not far from Rome, in the year 1464.

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, You Are Reading Chapter 34, chapters

Plates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22