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.
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