OF SIX MEDI/EVAL WOMEN 



in every detail with the inventory record of the 

 Chapel of Hesdin. We may also compare a 

 picture (No. 783, "The Exhumation of St. 

 Hubert ") in the Flemish room in the National 

 Gallery, where a somewhat similar scheme is 

 shown. 



Of the MSS. and Illuminations only brief 

 mention can be made. Surviving examples, and 

 the records of the time, testify to the splendour 

 and the sum of them. At the beginning of 

 the thirteenth century, the French miniature 

 was influenced in no small degree, both in 

 technique and in colour, by glass painting. 

 Towards the end of the century this influence 

 yielded to the prevailing enthusiasm for archi- 

 tecture and sculpture, and in Bibles and Psalters 

 alike there appear scenes with figures as in 

 bas-relief, with architectural backgrounds and 

 decorative details. The same spirit that evolved 

 tender foliage out of the hard stone of cathedral 

 and church evolved also the delicate hawthorn- 

 leaf enriching the initial letter of the MS. It 

 mattered little whether the material worked on 

 was stone or parchment. Each was but a means 

 for giving expression to a newly discovered 

 scheme of beauty the beauty of Nature. In 

 the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a re- 

 newed impetus had been given to the arts of 

 writing and illumination. This was partly 

 because a demand had arisen for a secular litera- 

 ture to supersede the tiresome and time-worn 

 recitations of minstrels, and partly because, in 



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