the contour of figures and the folds of drapery, &c., known as
grisaille or camaïeu gris. It was not indeed confined to the
Flemish schools, but was practised also to some extent and to
good effect in northern France, and also in Holland and other
countries; but the centre of its activity appears to have been
in the Low Countries. The excellence to which it attained
may be seen in the MSS. of the Miracles de Nostre Dame now
in Paris and the Bodleian Library, which were executed for
Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in the middle of the 15th
century.
Of the Dutch school of illumination, which was connected with that of Flanders, there is little to be said. Judging from existing examples, the art was generally of a more rustic and coarser type. There are, however, exceptions. A MS. in the British Museum (King’s MS. 5) of the beginning of the 15th century contains scenes from the life of Christ in which the features are carefully modelled, very much after the style of English work of the same time; and some of the specimens of Dutch work in camaïeu gris are excellent.
German illumination in the 15th century appears to have largely copied the Flemish style; but it lost the finer qualities of its pattern, and in decoration it inclined to extravagance. Where the Flemish artist was content with single flowers gracefully placed, the German filled his borders with straggling plants and foliage and with large flourished scrolls.
Italian illumination, which had developed so rapidly in the 14th century, now advanced with accelerated pace and expanded into a variety of styles, more or less local, culminating in the exquisite productions of the classical renaissance in the latter half of the 15th century. As in the other national styles of France and Flanders, the Italian miniaturist quickly abandoned the conventional for the natural landscape; but with more character both in the figure-drawing and in the actual representation of scenery. The colouring is brilliant, not of the softness of the Flemish school, but of stronger and harder body; the outlines are firm and crisp and details well delineated. The Florentine, the Lombard, the Venetian, the Neapolitan and other schools flourished; and, though they borrowed details from each other, each had something distinctive in its scheme of colouring. The border developed on several lines. The rayed gold spots or studs or pellets, which were noticed in the 14th century, are now grouped in profusion along the margins and in the interstices of delicate flowering and other designs. Another favourite detail in the composition of both initials and borders was the twining vine tendril, generally in white or gold upon a coloured ground, apparently a revival of the interlacing Lombardic work of the 11th and 12th centuries. At first, restrained and not too complex, it fills the body of initials and short borders; then it rapidly expands, and the convolutions and interlacings become more and more elaborate. Lastly came the completed solid frame into which are introduced arabesques, vignettes, candelabras, trophies, vases, medallions, antique gems, cupids, fawns, birds, &c., and all that the fancy led by the spirit of classical renaissance could suggest. Among the principal Italian MSS. of the 15th century in the British Museum there are: a copy of Plutarch’s Lives, with miniatures in a remarkable style (Add. MS. 22,318); Aristotle’s Ethics, translated into Spanish by Charles, prince of Viana, probably executed in Sicily about 1458 (Add. MS. 21,120); a breviary of Santa Croce at Florence, late in the century (Add. MS. 29,735); Livy’s History of the Macedonian War, of the Neapolitan school, late in the century (Harl. MS. 3694); and, above all, the remarkable Book of Hours of Bona Sforza of Savoy of about the year 1490 (Add. MS. 34,291); besides a fair number of MSS. exhibiting the rich colouring of the Venetian school.
Like that of the French and Flemish schools, Italian illumination survived into the 16th century, and for a time showed vigour. Very elaborate borders of the classical type and of good design were still produced. But, as in other countries, it was then a dying art. The attempt to graft illumination on to books produced by the printing press, which were now displacing the hand-written volumes with which the art had always been associated, proved, except in a few rare instances, a failure. The experiment did not succeed; and the art was dead.
It remains to say a few words respecting the book ornamentation of the Peninsula. In the earlier centuries of the middle ages there appears to have been scarcely anything worthy of note. The Mozarabic liturgies and biblical MSS. of the 9th to 12th centuries are adorned with initial Spain. letters closely allied to the primitive specimens of the Merovingian and Franco-Lombardic pattern, and coloured with the same crude tints; the larger letters also being partly composed of interlaced designs. But the style is barbaric. Such illustrative drawings as are to be found are also of a most primitive character. Moorish influence is apparent in the colours, particularly in the yellows, reds and blacks. In the later middle ages no national school of illumination was developed, owing to political conditions. When in the 15th century a demand arose for illuminated MSS., recourse was had to foreign artists. Flemish art naturally was imported, and French art on the one side and Italian art on the other accompanied it. In the breviary executed for Queen Isabella of Spain about the year 1497 (Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 18,851) we find a curious random association of miniatures and borders in both the French and the Flemish styles, the national taste for black, however, asserting itself in the borders where, in many instances, the usual coloured designs are replaced by black-tinted foliage and scrolls.
In other outlying countries of Europe the art of illumination can scarcely be said to have existed. In Slavonic countries a recollection of the Byzantine school lingered in book ornamentation, but chiefly in a degraded and extravagant system of fantastic interlacings. In the 16th century there was a revival in Russia of the Byzantine style, and the head-pieces and other ornamental details of the 11th and 12th centuries were successfully imitated.
The consideration of oriental art does not come within the scope of this article. It may, however, be noted that in Arabic and Persian MSS. of the 13th to 16th centuries there are many examples of exquisitely drawn title-pages and other ornament of intricate detail, resplendent with colour and gold, which may be ranked with western illuminations.
Authorities.—Medieval and later works dealing in part with the technicalities of illumination are collected by Mrs Merrifield, Original Treatises dating from the 12th to 18th Centuries on the Art of Painting (1849); see also Theophilus, De diversis Artibus, ed. R. Hendrie (1847). Text-books and collections of facsimiles are Count A. de Bastard, Peintures et ornaments des manuscrits, a magnificent series of facsimiles, chiefly from Carolingian MSS. (1832–1869); Shaw and Madden, Illuminated Ornaments from MSS. and early Printed Books (1833); Noel Humphreys and Jones, The Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (1849); H. Shaw, Handbook of Medieval Alphabets (1853), and The Art of Illumination (1870); Tymms and Digby Wyatt, The Art of Illumination (1860); Birch and Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations, with a dictionary of subjects in MSS. in the British Museum (1879); J. H. Middleton, Illuminated MSS. in Classical and Medieval Times (1892); G. F. Warner, Illuminated MSS. in the British Museum (official publication, 1903); H. Omont, Facsimilés des miniatures des plus anciens MSS. grecs de la Bibl. Nationale (1902); V. de Boutovsky, Histoire de l’ornement russe du X e au XVI e siècle, including facsimiles from Byzantine MSS. (1870); J. O. Westwood, Facsimiles of Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish MSS. (1868); E. M. Thompson, English Illuminated MSS. (1895); Paleografia artistica di Montecassino (1876–1884); Le Miniature nei codici Cassinesi (1887); A. Haseloff, Eine thüringisch-sächsische Malereischule des 13. Jahrhunderts (1897); G. Schwarzenski, Die Regensburger Buchmalerei des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts (1901); Sauerland and Haseloff, Der Psalter Erzbischof Egberts von Trier (1901).
Several of the most ancient illustrated or illuminated MSS. have been issued wholly or partially in facsimile, viz. The Ambrosian Homer, by A. Ceriani; the Schedae Vaticanae and the Codex Romanus of Virgil, by the Vatican Library; the Vienna Dioscorides, in the Leiden series of facsimiles; the Vienna Genesis, by Hartel and Wickhoff; the Greek Gospels of Rossano, by A. Haseloff; the Ashburnham Pentateuch, by B. von Gebhart; the Utrecht Psalter, by the Palaeographical Society.
Facsimiles from illuminated MSS. are also included in large palaeographical works such as Silvestre, Universal Palaeography, ed. Madden (1850); the Facsimiles of the Palaeographical Society (1873–1894) and of the New Palaeographical Society (1903, &c.);
