MASTER HONORÉ
(active 1285-1315 in Paris)

Biography

French illuminator. In 1296 a certain Honoré is named in the inventory of the Louvre treasury as the master of the Breviary of Philip the Fair. The master is also listed as a house-owner in Parisian tax records of 1293. The amount of tax he had to pay suggests that he must have run a large workshop. By 1318 he must have been dead for a while, as his son-in-law Richard de Verdun was already established as head of the workshop.

He had great influence on contemporary and later book painting. English impulses were absorbed by his school and formed into an individual, typically French style, in which the book page was framed with golden borders. Twigs projects for them, swaying with endless numbers of tiny ivy leaves, inhabited by flowers, fruits and creatures, and scattered with tiny figures, all drawn from nature with a sure hand.



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