French Court Art

French Court art is considered as the earliest phase of the Rayonnant style of French Gothic, closely associated with the reign of King Louis IX (122770). It was characterized by the dissolution of walls in favor of huge areas of windows subdivided by thin, wire-like tracery, the piercing of the wall of the triforium-gallery with windows, and the introduction of masses of colonnettes corresponding to the ribs in the vault. French Court Art is done to please the king and his rich friends. It often portrayed people in the court as mythological characters or even religious characters. This period witnessed considerable overlapping of styles. It is best illustrated by a series of manuscripts. The first half of the 13th century was a creative period in French Gothic art. It was the time when the great French cathedrals Chartres, Amiens, Reims, and others were being built. Sculpture, stained glass, manuscripts, metalwork, and ivories were all components of the cathedral as a multimedia ensemble. Because of factors of time and economics, however, few of these artistic projects were completed as a unified stylistic entity. These new stylistic directions converged with the advent of Rayonnant architecture in the 1230s, particularly in Paris. The Sainte-Chapelle, the French court chapel, dedicated in 1248, is an outstanding example of the merging of media. The chapel itself is on a smaller scale and gives the impression of being a reliquary turned outside in. One can see the walls have dissolved into a linear skeleton, leaving the stained-glass panels as the surface elements (Kibler 1995: 406). These tall, thin windows are composed of scenes in medallions. The figure style emphasizes fine lines, delicate features, and angular drapery. The wall surfaces are painted and gilded with decorative patterns. Sculptural figures of the Apostles are now

placed on the interior. Their poses have a swaying contrapposto that is accentuated by the play of V-shaped drapery folds. The focal point of the chapel was a great metalwork reliquary to house the relics of the Passion that Louis IX had acquired. It no longer survives, but representations of it show that it repeated the stylistic features of the chapels architecture and decoration. Manuscript illumination connected with the Parisian court reflects similar characteristics. In manuscript illumination, these elements found their fullest expression. Manuscripts of vernacular literature often contained vivid illustrations of the themes recounted in the text. Devotional manuscripts, especially books of hours, became popular. Jean Pucelle, whose uvre extends from 1320 to 1336, expanded the artistic range of manuscript illumination. In his small book of hours for Jeanne dvreux, queen of France, he used a Grisaille painting technique to endow his figures with a threedimensional presence characteristic of sculpture. His scenes, such as the Annunciation, began to situate the figures within believable spatial interiors. He also heightened the emotional level, as seen in the grieving spectators at the Crucifixion and Entombment. By the beginning of the 14th century, realism began to replace courtly elegance in the visual arts. Thus new stylistic tendencies were becoming established in French Gothic art. These interconnected developments included continuing emphasis on smaller scale; use of softer colors; interest in narrative, especially in depicting emotional interaction among figures; and depiction of a more concrete spatial setting for scenes. This transition can be seen by comparing Life of St. Denis (1317) and Les Trs riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1413) In 1317, King Philip V of France received from his chaplain Gilles, the abbot of Saint Denis, a luxury copy of a text entitled The Life of Saint Denis. The manuscript was begun during the reign of Philip IV at the command of Jean de Pontoise, Abbot of Saint

Denis. The manuscript contains seventy-seven miniatures illustrating the life and martyrdom of Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris and the patron saint of France. Gothic painting followed the same stylistic evolution as did sculpture; from stiff, simple, hieratic forms toward more relaxed and natural ones. Its scale grew large only in the early 14th century, when it began to be used in decorating the retable (ornamental panel behind an altar). Such paintings usually featured scenes and figures from the New Testament, particularly of the Passion of Christ and the Virgin Mary. These paintings display an emphasis on flowing, curving lines, minute detail, and refined decoration, and gold was often applied to the panel as background colour. Compositions became more complex as time went on, and painters began to seek means of depicting spatial depth in their pictures, a search that eventually led to the mastery of perspective in the early years of the Italian Renaissance. This manuscript is a prominent example of one of two trends present in Parisian illumination during the first years of the 14th century. The first trend was a continuation of the style of Master Honor in which the human figure is treated with a sinuous plasticity and, despite the use of modeling to create the impression of relief, was contained within a flat and depthless field. In the second trend, represented by this manuscript, the human figures lack the fluidity of those of Honor's followers and have a remarkable solidity and lack the affected poses and exaggerated stances of the first style. This trend was something new within Parisian illumination and combined the almost sculptural treatment of the human body with an attention to the details of daily life, as shown in the scenes of daily life found in this manuscript This conventional scene in deluxe manuscripts is the commission image. This image represent the active role the patron played in the creation of the text. The authority of the text is thus signified in part by the

authority of the patron. The Life of Saint Denis manuscript includes a miniature representing Saint Denis commissioning Saints Antonin and Saintin to write the story of his life. However, Early Gothic painting overlapped with a more realistic and naturalisc painting. Realism of landscape setting was developed in French painting from around the middle of the 14th century. By the early decades of the 15th century, manuscript illumination placed figures in landscape settings with considerable depth, a sense of aerial perspective, and attention to detail. The calendar miniatures by the Limbourg brothers in the Trs Riches Heures, one of many luxurious manuscripts illuminated for John, duke of Berry, in the early 15th century, are the epitome of these features. The landscape scenes of seasonal activities not only utilize techniques for showing spatial recession but also are so realistic that they include accurate renderings of the dukes numerous castles. What is unique in the works of the Limbourge brothers, apart from the almost fairytale of their colour, is their ever increasing skill of representing nature in its various aspects. This is what makes their final masterpiece a monumental achievement of European Gothic art, free from most the features of International Gothic Style yet one of its most refined expressions. Like most book of hours in the Trs Riches Heures contains a calendar. It is illustrated by 12 manitures each showing scenes typical of the time of year. These illustrations have become justly famous for their observation of the ways of both upper and lower classes, for their architectural portraits and for their pioneering landscape painting which stand at the beginning of the history of Westerns Europes Early renaissance. Illuminated manuscripts, especially devotional books and works of vernacular literature, remained popular. The development of oil painting and the advent of printing,

however, caused a decline in manuscript illumination in favor of panel painting, where realism of spatial perspective could be more fully developed. As economy and trade prospered, commercial centers, such as Lyon, created affluent middle-class patrons who could furnish their living quarters with tapestries as well as metalwork and ivory objects. The detailed realism and naturalism of late French Gothic art continued into the early 16th century, when the classical influences of the Italian Renaissance brought the art of the Gothic era to an end.

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