494 APPENDIX TO PART II

too, was proved by Dante [who, meeting in purgatory Oderigi, the famous illuminator, and friend of Giotto and of Dante, addressed him-

“Art thou not Oderigi? Art not thou

Agubbio’s glory-glory of that art

Which they of Paris call the limner’s skill?”]¹

Dante spoke also of England, but not as equally distinguished in art as France. He represented the people of England as remarkable for qualities of a more simple character [as a troop retired under the rocks in happy converse; and of the great Plantagenet monarch he said-]

“Behold the king of simple life and plain,

Harry of England.”²

And he characterised them as a people distinguished by force of character, veracity, and simplicity, but not celebrated for great pre-eminence in the arts.

20. He would now revert to the subject of illuminated letters. Here was a page of an illuminated missal hymn (exhibiting it), written in the year 1290, for the nuns of the monastery of Beaupre.³ It was very beautifully executed, and in a free style. He wished them to look at the little figure at the foot of the page, of an archer shooting at a bird with an arrow. The outline, notwithstanding its minuteness, was most accurately drawn, and evidently by a man who had thought it worth while to study the art he practised. He had made an enlargement of the little scarlet figure, and it would be seen from that, that although the writer did not, perhaps, know much of anatomy, he had taken care to study an archer drawing a bow before he drew the outline. It was quite evident that the artist knew something of the manner of drawing the bow, and desired to represent it accurately. Let them compare this outline with the base outline which he would now exhibit (producing it), by a man who did not care to know anything about drawing a bow before he began to trace his outlines. The arrow was altogether out of proportion-it was almost as long

¹ [Already quoted in the former address, § 5, p. 477, above.]

² [See Purgatory, vii. 131. The reference is to Henry III.]

³ [Antiphonarium Ecclesiæ S. Marie de Bello Prato. Two of the folio volumes of this MS. are now in the library of Mr. Henry Yates Thompson; the third remaining

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