Illuminating the Renaissance

This sumptuous book, which accompanies the Academy's Autumn 2003 exhibition, Illuminating the Renaissance, is illustrated with many of the most important and beautiful illuminated manuscripts ever produced. The ambitious scope of the exhibition is reflected in this publication which reveals the wealth and brilliance of Northern masters such as Gerard David and Rogier van der Weyden. Their polished and refined style emerged under the Burgundian Duke, Charles the Bold and flourished for nearly one hundred years between 1467 - 1560. Over 400 plates reveal the originality of this scintillating style which brings to life an imaginative courtly world of Chivalric romances and medieval banquets. A hallmark of this painting is a type of decorative border which renders flowers, insects and other fauna against solid coloured grounds and where the artist plays illusionistic tricks with the viewer to create some of the most colourful and luminous painting of the late medieval era. The plates are accompanied by full entries with essays written by the foremost scholars in the field from the John Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, The British Library, London and the Metropolitan Museum, New York.