In the late Middle Ages,
the itinerant life of
the nobles led them to
prefer small and
transportable works of
art; splendidly
illuminated
manuscripts were
much praised and the
best painters, usually
trained in Paris,
continued to work on a
small scale until the
fifteenth century. In
spite of the small size
of the illuminated
image, painters made
startling steps towards
a realistic
interpretation of the
world and in the
exploration of new
subject matters.
Many of these
illuminators were also
panel painters, foremost
of whom was Jean
Fouquet
(c1420-1481), born in
Tours in the Loire
valley and the central
artistic personality of
fifteenth-century
France. Court painter to
Charles VIII, Fouquet
drew from both Flemish
and Italian sources,
utilizing the new fluid
oil technique that had
been perfected in
Flanders, and concerning
himself with the problem
of representing space
convincingly, much like
his Italian
contemporaries. Through
this he moulded a
distinct personal style,
combining richness of
surface with broad,
generalized forms and,
in his feeling for
volume and ordered
geometric shapes, laying
down principles that
became intrinsic to
French art for centuries
to come, from Poussin to
Seurat and Cézanne.
Two other
fifteenth-century French
artists deserve brief
mention here,
principally for the
broad range of artistic
expression they embody. Enguerrand
Quarton
(c1410-c1466) was the
most famous Provençal
painter of the time; his
art, profoundly
religious in subject as
well as feeling, already
shows the impact of the
Mediterranean sun in the
strong light that
pervades his paintings.
His Pietà in the
Louvre is both stark and
intensely poignant,
while the Coronation
of the Virgin that
hangs at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon
is a vast panoramic
vision not only of
heaven but also of a
very real earth, in what
ranks as one of the
first city/landscapes in
the history of French
painting: Avignon itself
is faithfully depicted
and the Mont Ste-Victoire,
later to be made famous
by Cézanne, is
recognizable in the
distance.
The Master of
Moulins , active in
the 1480s and 1490s, was
noticeably more northern
in temperament, painting
both religious
altarpieces and
portraits commissioned
by members of the royal
family or the
fast-increasing
bourgeoisie.
