Jean Pucelle: French + Italian + Flemish = Pucelle

Workshop of Jean Pucelle - Belleville Breviary - 1323-26 - Manuscript (Ms. lat. 10484, 2 volumes), 240 x 170 mm - Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (click photo for larger image)Jean (Jehan) Pucelle (ca.1300-1355 and active c. 1319-1334 in Paris) was a French Gothic era manuscript illuminator—master of a celebrated workshop in Paris during the 1320s. Little is known of his career, but his large workshop dominated Parisian painting in the first half of the 14th century. He enjoyed court patronage and his work commanded high prices. Certain features of his art—particularly his mastery of space—indicate that he probably travelled in Italy early in his career. He was also familiar with Flemish developments. It was the synthesis of these two influences—allowing for an increasing penetration of naturalistic representation into traditional iconography—which formed the basis for Pucelle's individual style.

The Belleville Breviary comes from the workshop of Pucelle, and in it a great many new features appear. The page featured here reveals a wide range of decorative inventions embracing naturalistic flowers, insects, birds and animals—and grotesque little men playing musical instruments. But the whole effect is tightly controlled, associated as it is with a firm regular framework of narrow bars.

The influence of Italian painting is marked in Pucelle's work, demonstrated by his interest in pictorial space. This is possibly the most revolutionary feature of his work. The exploitation of various rudimentary forms of perspective was a completely new feature of late thirteenth-century Italian painting, and Pucelle incorporated something of these experiments into his manuscript illuminations.

Folio 24v (below) shows David and Saul enclosed within a small doll's-house-like construction, painted erratically but clearly in three dimensions. Below (on the bas-de-page) the scene of Cain murdering his brother is depicted.