John Skelton the poet did honour to the illuminated tomes of his day, in spite of the fact that the aeesthetic deterioration had begun.

  “With that of the boke lozende were the clasps
   The margin was illumined all with golden railes,
   And bice empictured, with grasshoppers and waspes
   With butterflies and fresh peacock’s tailes: 
   Englosed with... pictures well touched and quickly,
   It wold have made a man hole that had be right sickly!”

But here we have an indication of that realism which rung the death knell of the art.  The grasshoppers on a golden ground, and the introduction of carefully painted insect and floral life, led to all sorts of extravagances of taste.

But before this decadence, there was a very interesting period of transition, which may be studied to special advantage in Italy, and is seen chiefly in the illuminations of the great choral books which were used in the choirs of churches.  One book served for all the singers in those days, and it was placed upon an open lectern in the middle of the choir, so that all the singers could see it:  it will be readily understood that the lettering had to be generous, and the page very large for this purpose.  The decoration of these books took on the characteristics of breadth in keeping with their dimensions, and of large masses of ornament rather than delicate meander.  The style of the Italian choral books is an art in itself.

The Books of Hours and Missals developed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries into positive art galleries, whole pages being occupied by paintings, the vellum being entirely hidden by the decoration.  The art of illumination declined as the art of miniature painting progressed.  The fact that the artist was decorating a page in a book was lost sight of in his ambition to paint a series of small pictures.  The glint of burnished gold on the soft surface of the vellum was no longer considered elegant, and these more elaborate pictures often left not even a margin, so that the pictures might as well have been executed on paper and canvas and framed separately, for they do not suggest ornaments in a book after this change had taken place.  Lettering is hardly introduced at all on the same page with the illustration, or, when it is, is placed in a little tablet which is simply part of the general scheme.

[Illustration:  CHORAL BOOK, SIENA]

Among the books in this later period I will refer specifically to two only, the Hours of Ann of Brittany, and the Grimani Breviary.  The Hours of Ann of Brittany, illuminated by a famous French artist of the time of Louis XII., is reproduced in facsimile by Curmer, and is therefore available for consultation in most large libraries.  It will repay any one who is interested in miniature art to examine this book, for the work is so excellent that it is almost like turning the leaves of the original.  The Grimani Breviary, which was illuminated by Flemish