Tuesday, October 6, 2015

A Page From A Livre D'Heures


"Plate 16 shows us Franco-Flemish art in a phase in which the simple mastery of design had become subordinate to the brilliancy and magnificence of decoration. The inner border of interwoven blue and red lines upon a ground of gold is connected with, and grows out of, the illuminated initial in a suitably appropriate fashion, but the outer border of conventional foliage, red, blue, green, and yellow, with its inserted figures of a kneeling man and a hybrid dromedary, has no comprehensible affinity to the rest of the work, and is tacked on without any reason beyond the desire for splendor and variety. The style is not distinctively Flemish, although the painting was done at Tournay. It is rather a development out of Franco-Burgundian models, and more suggestive of French origin than any other; in fact, the extension of central French influence northwards through Burgundy." 

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

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