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Decorated Text Page

Creator

French Illuminator · 1520–1549

In the 1520s and 1530s, a large group of anonymous, French illuminators practiced their craft together in a workshop located in either Tours or Paris. Scholars have named one of the workshop's four leading artists the Master of the Getty Epistles, after a manuscript of the Epistles of Saint Paul in the J. Paul Getty Museum. After his association with this group of artists, who shared drawings that

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Date: about 1528–1530
Medium: Tempera colors and gold paint
Culture: French
Department: Manuscripts
Institution: Getty Museum

Blossoms strewn on a gold ground surround the opening text of the preface to Saint Paul's Epistles. Painted life-size and casting fictive shadows on the background, the flowers appear almost real. Nestled among the flowers are a variety of insects and a snail. The anonymous French illuminator of this page adapted his design from the illusionistic borders of earlier Flemish manuscripts, a common practice among French artists of the early 1500s. A more reserved floral motif decorates the gold ground of the initial letter *P* of the text.

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