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.
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