Illuminated Manuscripts Part 10

This is a form of ill.u.s.tration much appreciated by English illuminators at all times, though it appears also in much continental work. Among other English MSS. which display this taste we may point out Arund. 83, which among many other treatises and curious compositions, such as the "Turris Sapientiae" and a valuable calendar, in which are notes on the Arundels of Wemme, contains a psalter with anthems, etc., and hence is known as the Arundel Psalter. Its date is probably between 1330 and 1380.

The drolleries are very funny, and the other illuminations very instructive and curious. Some of them contain really good pen-drawing--refined, expressive, and graceful, but above all typical of English draughtsmanship. In a little scene of the adoration of the Magi (folio 125) the kings are costumed like our Henry III., as we find him 'n sculpture, wall paintings, etc. Over a very expressive picture of the three living and the three dead occur the lines, each over a figure: "Ich am afert Lo wet ich se Methinketh hit beth deueles thre. Ich wes welfair Such scheltou be For G.o.des loue be wer by me" (folio 128).[38]

The three living in this illumination are three fashionable ladies--no doubt princesses, for they wear crowns. Generally they are men, as at Lutterworth in the sculptures over the door, and in the famous fresco of Gozzoli at Pisa. The subject occurs sometimes in Books of Hours.

[38] "I am afraid. Lo, what I see Methinketh it be devils three. I was well fair. Such shalt thou be. For love of G.o.d beware by me."

Many MSS. of this period and later have hunting scenes, shooting practice, and games.

In MS. 264, Misc., Bodl. Lib., Oxford, there are such scenes, one being a game at "Blind Man's Buff," or as literally here "Hoodman Blind," for the latter actually wear a hood drawn down over his head and shoulders, and three girls are having a fine game with him. The goldfinch or linnet looking on from the border seems to enjoy the fun. Another fine source of similar things is the Louterell Psalter in the British Museum. In this also are some richly diapered backgrounds and exquisite border bands. This MS. dates about 1340. But the gem of English fourteenth-century illumination is the Royal MS. (2 C. 7) called Queen Mary's Psalter, not as being painted for her, since it had been painted nearly two centuries before she ever saw it. But in the year (?) 1553, being about to be sent abroad, it was stopped by a customs officer and presented to Queen Mary Tudor. It is bound in what appears to be the binding put on it by the Queen--_i.e._ crimson velvet embroidered on each cover with a large pomegranate, and having gilt corner protections and (once upon a time) golden clasps. The clasps are gone, but the plates remain riveted on the covers, engraven with the Tudor badges. The MS. contains 320 large octavo leaves, the first fifty-six being taken up with illuminated ill.u.s.trations of biblical history from the Creation to the death of Solomon. These pictures are arranged in pairs one over the other, and to each one is given a description in French, taken sometimes from the canonical text, sometimes from an apocryphal one. The drawings are really exquisite, they are so fine, so delicately yet so cleverly sketched. They are not coloured in full body-colours, but just suggestively, the draperies being washed over in thin tints, the folds well defined, but lightly shaded. Next after these subjects follows the Psalter with miniatures of New Testament scenes and figures of saints accompanied with most beautiful initials and ornaments, illuminated by a thoroughly practised hand, for the artist of this volume was by no means a novice at his work. A good example of it is given in _Bibliographica_, pl. 7 [23], which forms the frontispiece to vol. i., and one or two outlines in the folio catalogue of the Arundel MSS.

Arund. MS. 84 is also a good example of thirteenth-century illumination to a rather unpromising subject, being a Latin translation of Euclid from the Arabic by Athelard of Bath. It is ill.u.s.trated with diagrams.

Speaking of fourteenth-century illumination brings us to notice a very striking change which takes place in the reign of Richard II. in the character of English illumination. In the British Museum (Roy. 20 B. 6) is a MS. ent.i.tled an Epistle to Richard II., written, it is said, in Paris, in which the illuminations and foliages are purely French, but which are the type of all the English work of the same date. Take, for example, the MS. already spoken of (Roy. 2 A. 22), produced in the scriptorium at Westminster Abbey. Compare with it a Bible written for the use of Salisbury, and dated 1254. Then add the Tenison Psalter, the Arundel Psalter, illuminated 1310-20. If these MSS. be compared, however, with Lansd. 451, or Roy. 1 E. 9, the least accustomed eye must notice the entire and almost startling change in the luxuriance and character of the flowers and foliages which const.i.tute the initial and border decorations. It is not merely a development. There are additional features, but that these features are added, as usual, from France, is contradicted by reference to Roy. 20 B. 6, mentioned above. The new features are not French. The question is, where did they come from?

CHAPTER V

THE SOURCES OF ENGLISH FIFTEENTH-CENTURY ILLUMINATION

Attributed to the Netherlands--Not altogether French--The home of Anne of Bohemia, Richard II.'s queen--Court of Charles IV. at Prag--Bohemian Art--John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia--The Golden Bull of Charles IV.--Marriage of Richard II.--The transformation of English work owing to this marriage and the arrival of Bohemian artists in England--Influence of Queen Anne on English Art and Literature--Depression caused by her death--Examination of Roy. MS. 1 E.

9, and 2 A. 18--The Grandison Hours--Other MSS.--Introduction of Flemish work by Edward IV.

It has been suggested by a high authority that the immediate sources of the third period of English illumination were Netherlandish, but probable as this seems at first sight, there is another explanation which seems to the present writer to be a better one. As already pointed out, the influence on English work before 1377, notwithstanding political conditions, are distinctly French. After this date, though the artistic relation with France is not broken off, yet long before 1390 we find this new influence which is not French, and for which we have no special evidence that it is Netherlandish. If we go, however, a little farther afield, we shall find it. In the new work is a softer kind of foliage and a greater variety of sweet colour, and both these characteristics are found in a school of illumination that was being formed under the auspices of the Emperor Charles IV. at Prag in Bohemia.

The artists in that capital who executed the famous Golden Bull and commenced the grand Wenzel Bible were a select band of Frenchmen and Italians; the combined result of whose designs and labours was this very mixture of Gothic ivy leaf and thorn with the softer Othonian and Roman foliages and a new scheme of colour. Charles IV., son of that famous John of Luxembourg, the blind king of Bohemia, who perished at Crecy, was himself King of Bohemia as well as Emperor, and a man of brilliant personal accomplishments and cultivated tastes in literature and art.

Becoming Emperor the very next year after his succession to the throne of Bohemia, he fixed his residence at Prag, where he began the building of the new city, and founded a university on the model of that of Paris, where he had studied, and whence he had married his first wife, Blanche, daughter of Charles, Count of Valois. His university soon attracted some thousands of students, and with them no small crowd of literary men and artists, both from France and Italy. The great fact, however, to remember about Charles IV. is the Golden Bull, the masterly scheme by which all matters concerning the election to the Empire were in future to be settled. All the Const.i.tutions were written in a book called, from the _bulla_ or seal of gold which was appended to it, the Golden Bull, of which the text was drawn up either at Metz or Nuremberg in 1356, and many copies distributed throughout the Empire. It is further affirmed that the absolute original is at Frankfort. But the splendid copy made by order of the Emperor Wenzel in 1400 is still preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna. And as it is ah example of the style of illumination practised in Prag during the reign of Charles IV., we may call it Bohemian. It is true that the foliages are a little more luxuriant in this Wenzel-book than in the earliest examples of the style seen in England, but the twenty years which had elapsed would easily account for this difference. As compared, however, with either French or Netherlandish, the new English style shows a much greater similarity to the work then being done in Lower Bavaria. In these soft curling foliages and the fresh carnations of the flesh-tints of the Prag and Nuremberg illuminators we may trace the actual source of the remarkable transformation seen in English illumination after the marriage of Richard II.

Charles IV. was four times married. His successor, Wenzel, whose ghastly dissipations can only be regarded as the terrible proofs of insanity, was the child of his third wife. His fourth wife, the beautiful daughter of the Duke of Pomerania and Stettin, had four children, of whom Sigismund, the eldest, afterwards succeeded Wenzel as emperor, and Anne, the third, came to England as the wife of Richard II. The magnificence of her equipage and the crowd of persons who formed her retinue are noticed by contemporary writers, and the effect upon English manners was instantaneous. Her beauty, sweetness of manners, and culture rendered her at once not merely the idol of her husband, who, says Walsingham, "could scarcely bear her to be out of his sight," but universally beloved by all the English nation.

To her the first English writer on heraldry, John of Guildford dedicated his book, and the artists who came with her from her luxurious home at Prag would naturally become the leaders of taste in their adopted country. After a while, indeed, the numbers of countrymen of the Queen were looked upon as the cause of extortions practised on the English people in order to supply the money lavished on these foreigners. More than once is this grievance referred to. In an old MS. in the Harley Library (2261), containing a fifteenth-century translation of Higden's Polychronicon, these foreigners are made responsible for at least one fashionable extravagance: "Anne qwene of Ynglonde dyede in this year (1393) at Schene the viith day of the monethe of Janius, on the day of Pentecoste: the dethe of whom the Kynge sorowede insomoche that he causede the maner there to be pullede downe, and wolde not comme in eny place by oon yere folowynge where sche hade be, the churche excepte; whiche was beryede in the churche of Westmonastery, in the feste of seynte Anne nexte folowynge, with grete honoure and solennite. That qwene Anne purchased of the pope that the feste of Seynte Anne scholde be solenniysed in Ynglonde. The dethe of this qwene Anne induced grete hevynesse to n.o.ble men and to commune peple also, for sche causede noo lytelle profite to the realme. But mony abusions comme from Boemia into Englonde with this qwene, and specially schoone with longe pykes, insomoche that they cowthe not go untylle that thei were tyede to theire legges, usenge that tyme cheynes of silvyr at the pykes of theire schoone."

It is a fact that the Bohemian manner of illumination, with its three-lobed and vari-coloured foliages, became the fashion in every English centre of illumination. In the preceding remarks we have endeavoured to account for it. That the same style went from Prag to Nuremberg may be only the natural _result_ of its being carried in the marriage and retinue of the Princess Margaret, Anne's half-sister, who became the wife of the Burggrave John.

Quite a similar MS. to those executed in the reign of Richard II. in England and those of Bohemia is the Wilhelm van Oransse of Wolfram v.

Eschenbach, now in the Imperial Library at Vienna. A similar, but inferior, work exists in the Prayer-book written by Josse de Weronar in the British Museum (Add. 15690). The English foliages never show quite all the varieties of colour seen in the continental examples, but the golden diapers and pounced gold patterns are quite as elaborate. See this work, however, in Arundel 83. It appears also in the mural paintings of the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries. No doubt the English art of the fourteenth century is of French origin--so mainly is that of Bohemia--for Charles IV. was brought up at the Court of France. Further than this, we think we are justified in tracing the new elements in Bohemian to Italy, and those in English to Bohemia. The most striking proof is not only the foliages, but the change from the long, colourless faces of French miniatures to the plump and ruddy countenances seen, for example, in the Lancastrian MSS. in the Record Office and in Harl. 7026[39] of the British Museum. Of course, this suggestion of source is not put forward as a dead certainty, but it affords this probability that as the style suddenly arose during the lifetime of Anne of Bohemia--and she was the acknowledged leader of fashion--so her tastes in respect of illuminated books and heraldic decoration would become those of her new subjects. Let us examine this fifteenth-century English work, and for this purpose let us take the great illuminated Bible in the Royal Library, 1 E. 9. It is an enormous folio, and rather unwieldly, but a most interesting example of the new style. Its initials are large, richly illuminated in gold and attractive colours. It has well-executed histories within the initials, and boldly designed border frames, elegantly adorned with foliages and conventional or idealised flowers. Perhaps the most noticeable feature is the beautiful, decorative foliage work in the limbs of the letters--itself a South German peculiarity--then the alternation of colours without interrupting the design, the profusion of foliage modelling in the backgrounds of the letter panels outside the historiations. The next thing is the bold use of minium side by side even with pure rose-petal colour, pale bright cerulean blue, and bright gold. Lastly, the immense variety of leaf-forms, based on the three, five, and seven-lobed groupings of the typical form. The coil and spiral are freely used as the groundwork, and the colours alternated as the coils or spirals change from front to back of the leaf.

[39] The Lovell Psalter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MISSALE (SARUM USE) 14TH CENT. (LATE) _Brit. Mus. Harl. MS. 2785, fol. 194 v._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HORae E. MAR. VIESIS.

15TH CENT. (EARLY) _Brit. Mus. Roy. Ms. 2, A. xviii, fol. 55_]

Backgrounds of miniature histories are treated as in the Bohemian MSS.--Wilhelm v. Oransse, for example--that is, with fine golden tracery-patterns on deep, rich colours. The figure-painting is vastly improved--the features now being actually painted and modelled as in modern portrait painting, not merely indicated by pen strokes. The flesh-tints as previously noticed are bright and ruddy. The princ.i.p.al colours used on the foliages are blue, crimson, of various depths, and bright vermilion, with occasional admission of bright green and paled red ochre. Very similar to 1 E. 9 is Harl. 1892, and among other MSS.

that may be studied with this one is 2 A. 18--a book of Offices, very sweetly illuminated, and full of typical examples of treatment both of architectural design and treillages of foliage.

The Gothic pilasters are filled with the same kind of coiling and spiral leaves and ribbons that are used in 1 E. 9 and Harl. 1892, the backgrounds of the miniatures enriched with fine gold patterns. The furniture and costumes indicate the later years of the reign of Richard II., being similar to those shown in the miniatures of Harl. 1319, which relates the story of Richard's misfortunes. A few miniatures of saints accompany the prayers to them. One of the saints is peculiar, being the Prior of Bridlington, perhaps the "Robertus scriba" who copied certain theological treatises for the library, and who lived in the time of Stephen or Henry II.

In the beautiful initial D is the figure of a lady praying, the first few words of the prayer being written on a floating ribbon above her head. A fine panelling of black and gold forms the background. The lady's costume is that of the end of the fourteenth century, her head-dress being somewhat lower than that worn in the time of Isabella of Bavaria; in other respects she recalls the figure of Christine de Pisan in Harl. 4431--one of the fine MSS. of the French school. As the psalter or offices was once the property of the Grandison family, as is shown by the numerous entries respecting them in the calendar, no doubt this lady was the first owner of the MS., and probably the same as shown in the beautiful miniature of the Annunciation previously given. Many charming initials follow this one, and brightly coloured bracket treillages and borders are given in profusion, introducing every variety of coloured ideal leaf-form known to the art of the time. It seems probable from its style and the costumes that the MS. was executed for the Lady Margaret, widow of Thomas, the last Lord Grandison, who died in 1376, and given to her by Sir John Tuddenham, her second husband. A better model for the modern illuminator could not easily be found. Other examples may be briefly enumerated, in 2 B. 8, 2 B. 10, 2 B. 1, 2 B. 12 and 13, 18 A. 12, 18 C. 26, Harl. 1719, 1892, etc. The Psalter 2 B. 8 has the good fortune to be dated, and its purpose and other particulars clearly set forth in a statement at the beginning of the volume. The gist of this is that it was composed at the instance of the Lady Joan Princess of Wales, mother of Richard II., and that it was executed by Brother John Somour (Seymour), a Franciscan, in 1380. Thus the illumination of it would probably be done about the time, of the young Queen's arrival in England. The Princess Joan died July 8th, 1385. The work corresponds with this date. The Grandison Psalter is perhaps somewhat later than Roy. 2 B. 1, and the rest are later still.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VEGETIUS FOUR BOOKS OF KNIGHTHOOD (DE RE MILITARI) 15TH CENT.

_Brit. Mus. Roy. MS. 18 A. xii, f. 1_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PSALTERIUM C. 1470 _Brit. Mus. Harl. MS. 1719, fol. 73 v._]

One rather fine example is seen in Arund. MS. 109, a folio called the Melreth Missal, because given by William Melreth, Alderman of London, to the church of St. Lawrence, Old Jewry. He died in 1446.

For topographical miniature a good example occurs in Roy. 16 F. 2, which contains a grand view of London, including the Tower, but this MS. is probably not of genuine English production. Nor is Roy. 19 C. 8, though a very interesting example as regards costume and local usages. The genuine English work of which Arund. 109 is a type has received the name of Lancastrian, as falling to the reigns of the three Lancastrian kings--Henry IV., V., and VI.

In the reign of Edward IV. we meet with the introduction of Flemish illumination, which gradually supersedes the native style, and by the time of Henry VII. the latter has almost disappeared. Its final extinction, however, was left for the sixteenth century, when either Flemish or Italian renaissance work entirely took its place. By the time of Queen Elizabeth English illumination was a thing of the past.

CHAPTER VI

ITALIAN ILLUMINATION

Barbaric character of Italian illumination in the twelfth century--Ravenna and Pavia the earliest centres of revival--The "Exultet"--La Cava and Monte Ca.s.sino--The writers of early Italian MSS.

not Italians--In the early fourteenth century the art is French--Peculiarities of Italian foliages--The Law Books--Poems of Convenevole da Prato, the tutor of Petrarch--Celebrated patrons--The Laon Boethius--The Decretals, Inst.i.tutes, etc.--"Decretum Gratiani,"

other collections and MSS.--Statuts du Saint-Esprit--Method of painting--Don Silvestro--The Rationale of Durandus--Nicolas of Bologna, etc.--Triumphs of Petrarch--Books at San Marco, Florence--The Brera Graduals at Milan--Other Italian collections--Examples of different localities in the British Museum--Places where the best work was done--Fine Neapolitan MSS. in the British Museum--The white-vine style superseded by the cla.s.sical renaissance.

Considering the position occupied by the Roman Empire as the civiliser of Europe, it is not a little curious and somewhat surprising to find that in the twelfth century, when German and French artists were doing such good and even admirable work, that of Italy was almost barbaric. A MS. in the Vatican (4922) is shown as a proof of this. It is not an obscure sort of book that might have been written by a merely devout but untrained monk for his own use, but a work of importance executed for no less a personage than the celebrated Countess Matilda. The scribe was Donizo, a monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Canossa. It is of the early or prae-Carolingian type, rather inclined to Byzantine, but with the big hands and aimless expression of all semi-barbaric work. Yet it has a certain delicacy and carefulness. In Rome itself during the ninth century barbarism was at its very lowest point. Only the sea-port towns had any notion of what was being done in other places. Painting was practised, it is true, so was mosaic, but the worst of Oriental carpets would be a masterpiece of elegance beside anything done in Italy.

Whatever gleams of artistic intelligence appear, they certainly emanated from Ravenna or Pavia. But as there were no wealthy and peaceful courts, no indolent, high-bred, luxurious courtiers during that dark and troublous period, miniature or illumination had no call for existence.

In the twelfth century book-ill.u.s.tration consisted simply of pen-sketching of the most elementary kind. The Lombards alone produced anything like illumination. A sort of roll containing pictures of the various scenes of the Old and New Testaments which represented the leading doctrines of the Church, and which used to hang over the pulpit as the preacher discoursed upon them, is the only representative of the time. Such a roll was called an "Exultet" from its first word, which is the beginning of the line "Exultet jam Angelica turba caelorum" of the hymn for the benediction of the paschal wax tapers on Easter Eve.

Several of these "Exultets" are still kept in the Cathedral at Pisa, and in the Barberini and Minerva Libraries in Rome.[40] Of course the pictures are upside down to the reader, so as to be right for the congregation.

[40] See one in British Mus., Add. MS. 30337, and description of it in _Journ. of the Archaeol. a.s.soc._ vol. 34, p. 321.

Very little progress was made, as we may imagine, until after the great revival movement begun by Cimabue, Giotto, and their contemporaries, about the middle of the thirteenth century. But before taking up any inquiry into Italian work generally we must not omit reference to the remarkable MSS. produced at La Cava and Monte Ca.s.sino during the Franco-Lombard period. Some idea has already been furnished in dealing with Celtic MSS. and the foundations begun by Columba.n.u.s and his scholars. Indeed, the general character of these Lombard MSS. is seen in the Franco-Celtic. The distinguishing feature, if there be one, is the frequent recurrence among the interlacements of the _white dog_. The La Cava Library, which was one of the finest in Italy, has been transferred to Naples. Monte Ca.s.sino still continues and maintains not only a library but a printing press, from which the learned fathers have issued at least one great work on the subject of Ca.s.sinese palaeography. Of all the prae-Carolingian hands, Lombardic or Lombardesque was certainly the most peculiar, and is perhaps the most difficult to read. One evidence of this is the diversity of opinion on the true reading of certain proper names in the original MS. containing the oldest text of Tacitus which happens to be a Lombard MS. The characters and other examples of the eleventh to the thirteenth century that have been published at Monte Ca.s.sino, however, fully ill.u.s.trate the peculiarities of the handwriting, and give besides several splendid examples of calligraphy.[41]

[41] The La Cava MSS. have been described by P. Gillaume in an essay published at Naples, 1877, and those of Monte Ca.s.sino by A. Caravita, Monte Ca.s.sino, 1860-71.

One of the earliest illuminated Italian MS. which bears a date is a Volume of Letters of St. Bernard, now in the Library of Laon. It is very seldom that the earlier scribes and illuminators who produced Italian MSS. or worked in Italy were Italians. They were usually foreigners and mostly Frenchmen, and the art was looked upon at the beginning of the fourteenth century as a French art. This very decided example of Italian work is already different from the French work of the same period. The profile foliages have already acquired that peculiar trick of sudden change and reversion of curve, showing the other side of a leaf with change of colour, which is a marked characteristic of all fourteenth-century Italian illumination. For examples of it, the Bolognese Law Books, Decretals, and such-like, afford frequent ill.u.s.tration. Before leaving this first-quoted MS., we may say that it points to France rather than to Germany or Lombardy for its general form of design, but the foliages are quite of another kind. Another Laon MS.

(352) shows the same treatment of foliage, but in effect more like what may be considered as the typical Italian style seen in the famous Avignon Bible of the anti-pope, Clement VII. (Robert of Geneva), which dates between 1378 and 1394.[42]

[42] See Humphreys, _Illum. Books of the Middle Ages_, pl. 16; and Silvestre, _Paleographie Universelle_, pl. 117.

A further example still more powerful in expression and skilful in manipulation is seen in a copy of the Poems of Convenevole da Prato, in the British Museum (Roy. 6 E. 9), executed for King Robert of Naples, a patron of Giotto (1276-1337), which, in comparison with the Laon Letters of St. Bernard of about the same date, is even still more Italian.

Cardinal Stefaneschi, another of Giotto's patrons, was also a promoter of illumination. His Missal, now at Rome in the archives of the Canons of St. Peter's, is a fine example of this style. It dates from 1327 to 1343. The MS. of Boethius at Laon is another. But one of the most masterly, whether as to design or manipulation, is a law book in the Library at Laon (No. 382). This grand folio contains "Glossa Ioannis Andreae in Clementinas"--"The Gloss or Explanation of Joannes Andreas on the Clementines."

By the way, as illuminated law books, civil and canonical, form so large a section of Italian MSS., it may be well in this place to warn the reader against random explanations sometimes offered in sale catalogues concerning these books, their authors and commentators. For instance, this commentator Joannes Andreas was not, as we have seen it confidently stated (as if it were part of the actual contemporary t.i.tle of the MS.), Bishop of Aleria (Episcopus Aleriersis), but a jurist of Bologna. The bishop lived a century or so after the jurist, who had completed his long career as professor of law at Bologna extending over forty-five years before the bishop was born. His chief works are Commentaries on the Clementines (printed in folio at Mayence 1471, and again at Dijon in 1575), and Commentaries on Five Books of the Decretals (printed in folio at Mayence in 1455, and at Venice in 1581). While on this topic of Italian law MSS., it may be useful to state clearly what they are. By way of contrast to the _Corpus Juris Canonici_, or Body of Canon Law, the subject of books dealing with the so-called Decretals, the other branch, including the Inst.i.tutes Digest and Novellae of Justinian, was ent.i.tled _Corpus Juris Civilis_.

The Decretals, then, which we so often meet with in public libraries under various names, are the canons which mainly const.i.tute the Canon Law. Strictly speaking they are the papal epistolary decrees (decreta), said to have existed from very early times. In the ninth century a collection of them was formed, or manufactured, in the name of the celebrated Isidore of Seville. But with the donation of Constantine to Pope Sylvester and many others in the later compilation of Gratian, these are usually looked upon as spurious and false. The great and authorised collection was completed by a simple Benedictine monk of St.