[59] Comptes de l'Hôtel de Louis XI., 1478-81. Another quittance shows him to have been employed on the decorations of the château of Plessis les Tours. We may easily see how it is that these artists, when they came to illuminate the books entrusted to them, had such special knowledge of embroideries and decoration of armour when we read in the accounts how they were constantly employed in designing dresses for weddings, tournaments, and funeral obsequies, and making "patterns for the dress and equipment of war." A notice in 1508 tells us that Anne of Brittany made an order of payment to Bourdichon of 1,050 _livres tournois_ for having "richly and sumptuously historiated and illuminated a great Book of Hours for our use and service to which he has given and employed much time, and also on behalf of other services which he has rendered hitherto." This refers to the celebrated "Hours of Anne of Brittany," now in the National Library at Paris. This volume, peerless of its kind, has been reproduced in colour lithography by Curmer of Paris--the result, however, is disappointing from the flat and faded look of the prints as compared with the brilliancy of the original pages. The MS. is an invaluable monument of French Renaissance illumination. It is French of Touraine rather than of Paris, yet bearing traces in its flowers and fruit borders of Flemish modes of ornament. It has also reminiscences of Italian painting. But the French neatness and restraint from over-decoration have kept it in a manner unique. It has not quite the softness of Italian, and is far from the intensity of Flemish. Indeed, its fault, if it be faulty, is in its want of force. With the exception of Anne's own portrait given with her patrons, St. Anne, St. Helena, and St. Ursula. The Queen's gown is of brown gold brocade trimmed with dark brown fur. Her hair is brown, like the fur. She wears a necklace of gems set in gold. On her head is a black hood edged with gold and jewels, beneath which and next her face is a border of crimped white muslin, She has brown eyes and finely pencilled eyebrows. As to nose and mouth, she and the two younger saints are pretty much alike. With the allowance of blue for black, St. Anne wears the dress of a Benedictine abbess. A dark crimson cloth covers a table before which the Queen is kneeling, and on which lies open a finely illuminated Service-book. The Calendar which follows this portrait is for each month enclosed in a margin of ornament. To the outer margin of every other page of the book is placed a broad tablet or pilaster containing flowers, fruits, insects, etc., from five to six inches high, each having the Latin name of the plant, etc., at top in red, and the French one in red or blue at the bottom. These names may have been put in later. It must be admitted that the fruits, flowers, and insects are painted with the greatest care and neatness, though sometimes a little assisted by the imagination of the painter. The text