Figure 7.1: Single Notes and Values of Franconian Notation
NEW CURRENTS IN ART
Flexibility and inventiveness describe the art of Franco’s time as well. It had new
patrons to serve: the urban elite. In the Paris of Saint Louis’s day, for example,
wealthy merchants coveted illuminated law books and romances; rich students prized
illustrated Bibles as essential fashion accessories; churchmen wanted beautiful service
books; the royal family wanted lavishly illustrated Bibles, Psalters, and Books of
Hours; and the nobility aspired to the same books as their sovereigns. The old-
fashioned scriptoria that had previously produced books, with scribes and artists
working in the same place, gave way to specialized workshops, often staffed by
laypeople. Some workshops produced the raw materials: the ink, gold leaf, or
parchment; others employed scribes to copy the texts; a third kind was set up for the
illuminators; and a fourth did nothing but bind the finished books. This was not mass
production, however, and the styles of different artists are clear, if subtle. In Plate
7.7, the artist of one workshop has made the apostle John conform to the shape of an
S, his body out of joint yet utterly elegant. But another Parisian artist working at
about the same time, in a different shop and on a different book, painted a thinner
John, almost ramrod straight, with a flaming head of hair. (See Plate 7.8.)
