Between France and Flanders : Manuscript Illumination in Amiens in the Fifteenth Century

This superbly illustrated study is the first monograph devoted to the manuscript production of a regional French town of the late Middle Ages.

Amiens at this period was an important commercial, religious, and cultural centre, poised geographically and politically between France and Flanders, and thus between the most avant-garde artistic regions in Northern Europe for panel painting and manuscript illumination. Examining manuscript illumination in Amiens in its historical and socio-economic context, the author pinpoints the artistic interchange between France and Flanders and at the same time reassesses many of the assumptions made concerning the work of the most famous illuminator working in Burgundian territories at the time, Simon Marmion.

Since documentary evidence is lacking, the internal evidence of the books themselves is employed, using a codicological approach to establish which manuscripts were made in the town, when and how, and how to trace stylistic, physical, and textual relationships between them. Major themes of the work are the interchange of artistic ideas and the use of models in the process of creation and production, the formation of local style, and the reaction of indigenous illuminators to foreign ideas from both Paris and Flanders. Generously illustrated in colour and black and white, including plates from manuscripts never before reproduced, this important volume provides a model for the study of regional manuscript production, and makes an invaluable contribution to the study of fifteenth-century manuscript art.