Monday 5th January and so to the Royal Academy in London to visit the exhibition of Illuminations from the Netherlands between 1440 and 1560. The early period was dominated by the rise of Burgundy and then later by the domination of the Netherlands by the Hapsburgs, and the Reformation. Characteristic of the Burgundian Court was the collection of deluxe illustrated books. In fact the market for these spread wider to England and to other Northern European Courts. The illuminators are for the most part unknown by name and identified by stylistic analysis. They in some cases recreated the style of panel painters and in others shared pattern books.
Three types of works were illuminated. The first were the books of hours, devotional works for lay peoples personal devotion which, under the influence of the devotion moderna, became vehicles for linking the human and divine worlds. The minitures took on an emotional expression, designed to involve the user in meditation on the reality of the divine in the human sphere.This was typified by the so called Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy in a work which discovers Mary at her devotions and then though a window actually in the presence of the Virgin.
The second were books of history commissioned by rulers both to understand the past and to link themselves to it. These were books for reading aloud from a lectern to inspire the court. The pictures are large enough to be displayed to a small audience. The expression is designed again to identify the audience with the events to inspire them.
Though the exhibition concentrates on the developments painting, it perhaps under estimates the way the requirements of time and skill were combined with a commercial approach to meeting increasing demand. Illuminated books continued to be produced into the second half of the sixteenth century. Most significantly to introduce landscapes independent of the tradition. These perhaps became the pattern for the development of secular landscape painting of the second half of the sixteenth century.
What led to the demise of illumination was not just printing and changes in patronage as suggested by the catalogue but the raison d'être of these books no longer existed after the Reformation and the Council of Trent. Some years ago the Academy mounted an exhibition which showed how fine books both written and printed were illuminated in Italy in the sixteenth century. The comparison is entirely neglected.
Playing down the commercial aspect of the work in favour of a art historical approach leaves the visitor with the impression of a concentration on masterpieces rather than the delineation of a cultural tradition modified and transformed by the changing function of what was produced. These are supreme craft pieces, like the sculptures on Donotello discussed previously.
The exhibition continues until 22nd February 2004
Example of the works are available
hereIt is intereting to note the approach of the Pauly Getty Museum to the presentaion of the works, compared with the RA.
Peter's Notes and Commonplaces
