r than delicate meander. The style of the Italian choral books
is an art in itself.

The Books of Hours and Missals developed during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries into positive art galleries, whole pages being
occupied by paintings, the vellum being entirely hidden by the
decoration. The art of illumination declined as the art of miniature
painting progressed. The fact that the artist was decorating a page
in a book was lost sight of in his ambition to paint a series of
small pictures. The glint of burnished gold on the soft surface
of the vellum was no longer considered elegant, and these more
elaborate pictures often left not even a margin, so that the pictures
might as well have been executed on paper and canvas and framed
separately, for they do not suggest ornaments in a book after this
change had taken place. Lettering is hardly introduced at all on
the same page with the illustration, or, when it is, is placed
in a little tablet which is simply part of the general scheme.

[Illustration: CHORAL BOOK, SIENA]

Among the books in this later period I will refer specifically to
two only, the Hours of Ann of Brittany, and the Grimani Breviary.
The Hours of Ann of Brittany, illuminated by a famous French artist
of the time of Louis XII., is reproduced in facsimile by Curmer, and
is therefore available for consultation in most large libraries.
It will repay any one who is interested in miniature art to examine
this book, for the work is so excellent that it is almost like
turning the leaves of the original. The Grimani Breviary, which
was illuminated by Flemish artists of renown, was the property of
Cardinal Grimani, and is now one of the treasures of the Library
of St. Marc in Venice. It is impossible in a short space to comment
to any adequate extent upon the work of such eminent artists as
Jean Foucquet, Don Giulio Clovio, Sano di Pietro, and Liberale da
Verona; they were technically at the head of their art, and yet,
so far as taste in book decoration is to be considered, their work
would be more satisfactory as framed miniatures than as marginal
or paginal ornament.

Stippling was brought to its ultimate perfection by Don Giulio
Clovio, but it is supposed to have been first practised by Antonio
de Holanda.

One of Jehan Foucquet's assistants was Jehan Bourdichon. There is
an interesting memorandum extant, relating to a piece of illumination
which Bourdichon had accomplished. "To the said B. for having