--The reason for it--MS. in Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge--The Padua Missal--Artists' names--Whence obtained.
Through the thirteenth century is the epoch of the Gothic renaissance,
it is the fourteenth to which really belongs the title of the Golden
Age. The style of work remains precisely the same, only it grows. It
changes from the bud to the leaf. It casts off the severity and much of
the restraint of its earlier character. To the grace of youth it adds
beauty, the beauty of adolescence. To fourteenth-century illumination we
can give no higher praise than that it is beautiful. Not, indeed,
because of its deliberate limitations, but in spite of them. For after
ages have taught us that if in pure ornament and resplendent decorative
completeness the pages of the fourteenth century cannot be surpassed, in
miniature historiation it must take a second place. The skilled
illuminators of the later schools are the masters of the mere picture.
For surely no judge of art could possibly assert that the miniatures of
the Grunani Breviary or of the Brera Graduals as miniatures are inferior
to those of the Psalter of St. Louis, the Berry Bible, or the
Prayer-book of Margaret of Bavaria. Yet these are typical MSS. of the
highest rank. Hence we say that while the illumination of the Golden Age
of the art was beautiful, it was not absolutely perfect.
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