Let us now return to the Laon
example--one of four or five of the species in that collection. The
scene where the author is presenting his work to the pope--we now know
them both--is quite a painting. Except for the defect that kneeling
figures are somewhat mis-shapen or ill-proportioned in the lower limbs,
the work is quite comparable with contemporary mural painting, both for
composition and colour. It is almost modern. It is quite realistic. In
costume, expression, easy and appropriate attitude, it has quite outrun
French illumination altogether.
Another dated MS. (1332) in the same Library (No. 357), "Rubrics of the
Decretals," is a most amusing example of the universal taste for irony
and satire in the initial figures and corner effigies.
A much-lauded MS. among these fourteenth-century examples is one that
has been carefully and expensively reproduced by the late Cte. Horace de
Viel-Castel, namely, the "Statuts de l'Ordre du Saint-Esprit au Droit
D?sir ou du Noeud," an order instituted at Naples in 1352 by Louis I.
d'Anjou (called Louis of Taranto), King of Jerusalem, Naples, and
Sicily, cousin and husband of Queen Joanna of Naples. The style of the
illumination is precisely the same as those just mentioned belonging to
Laon, and as several MSS.
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