Brussels Initials Master

The Master of the Brussels Initials ( c. 1390–1410), previously identified with Zebo da Firenze, was a manuscript illuminator active mainly in Paris. He brought Italian influences to French manuscript illumination and in that way played an important role in the development of the so-called International Gothic style. Decorations by the artist appear in several different works, illustrated by several different artists, and some attributions have been questioned. A corpus of works attributable to the Master of the Brussels Initials was initially identified by art historians Otto Pächt and Millard Meiss. The artist's style was inventive, bright and lively, and G. Evelyn Hutchinson has also pointed out the unusually realistic depictions of minute wildlife found in his work. John, Duke of Berry, one of the greatest bibliophiles of the Middle Ages, commissioned works from the Master of the Brussels Initials.

Biography

The exact identity of the artist has not been established. Otto Pächt thought the artist could be identified with one Zebo or Zanobi da Firenze, but this attribution has since been rejected. The identification was based on a single inscription, first identified by and difficult to read, in the margins of a page in a book of hours made for Charles III of Navarre, the Hours of Charles the Noble. An open book held by a griffin would supposedly contain the words "Zebo da Firenze". Pächt deduced that this would be identical with a painter called Zanobi da Firenze, known from archives. However, the name Zebo is not an abbreviation or a substitute for the name Zanobi, and the Zanobi mentioned in the archives appears to have lived later than the illuminator. It has furthermore been proposed that the inscription was made by another, secondary illustrator, and could be interpreted as "Zecho di Firenze".

Instead the notname "Master of the Brussels Initials" has been accepted for the artist. The name is derived from a series of historiated initials in , a sumptuous book of hours which is part of the collections of the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels.

G. Evelyn Hutchinson has pointed out that among the manuscript decorations attributed to the Master of the Brussels Initials there are also unusually realistic depictions of firebugs, Pyrrhocoris apterus — "certainly by someone who knew the bug in nature" — and depictions of a mutant form of Zygaena ephialtes in certain manuscripts may have been made by another artist after a model or sketch by the Master of the Brussels Initials. He argues that this is an example of a development within manuscript decoration towards a more naturalistic world view, "part of the same movement that produced the contemporary studies of optics and mechanics in England, France and Germany" and which continued with the production of formal natural history treaties in the 16th century.