Jean Bondol, Annunciation, Gotha
Missal, ca. 1375. Fol. 110. Courtesy of
the Cleveland Museum of Art,
Cleveland.
Realism of landscape setting was also 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 Très 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 duke’s
numerous castles.
The Limbourg brothers and Claus Sluter typify another aspect of Late Gothic art in
France: the influence of styles and employment of artists from across Europe. The
Limbourgs and Sluter came from one major artistic center, the Low Countries; southern
Europe, especially Italy, exercised a particularly strong influence in southern France,
where the Avignon papacy in the 14th century had encouraged the residence of Italian
artists who decorated the papal palace. Paris remained important in late-medieval art, but
other regions asserted equally strong artistic traditions. In Normandy, renewed
architectural activity after the Hundred Years’ War brought a resurgence of stained-glass
projects in which realism of figure style and details was manifested in the muted colors of
the glass.
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