_Manuscripts in Grisaille._ In addition to the illuminations glowing with gold and colour of jewel-like brilliance, a peculiar class of miniature painting came into use in France during the fourteenth century and to some extent lasted till the close of the fifteenth. This was a system of almost monochromatic painting in delicate bluish grey tints with high lights touched in with white or fluid gold; this is called painting in _grisaille_ or _camaieu-gris_[134]; it frequently suggests the appearance of an onyx _cameo_ or other delicate relief. The earliest examples of _grisaille_, dating from the first half of the fourteenth century, sometimes have grounds of the brilliant gold, red and blue diapers, the figures themselves being painted in _grisaille_; but in its fully developed form no accessories of colour are used, and no burnished gold is introduced, only the _mat_, glossless fluid gold being used in some cases for the high lights. _Delicacy of Grisaille._ Some of the miniatures of this class are extremely beautiful for the delicacy of their modelling and the great refinement of the design, and are evidently the work of artists of the highest class. This system of illumination, being unaided by the splendours of shining gold and bright colours, requires a rather special delicacy of treatment, and was of course quite unsuited for the cheap and gaudy manuscripts which were mere commercial products. In some cases the _grisaille_ pictures are clearly the work of a different hand from the rest of the book, and thus we sometimes see them combined with richly illuminated initials and ivy-leaf borders of the usual gorgeously coloured type. In some late manuscripts the _grisaille_ miniatures are distinctly intended to imitate actual bas-reliefs, and are painted with deceptive effects of roundness. This led to the introduction into manuscript ornaments of imitations of classical reliefs of gilt bronze or veined marbles, such as occur so often in the very sculpturesque paintings of the great Paduan, Andrea Mantegna. _Secular MSS._ Till the early part of the fourteenth century the art of the illuminator had been mostly devoted to books on sacred subjects, but at this time manuscripts of _Chronicles_, accounts of _travel_, _Romances_ and other secular works, often in the vulgar tongue, were largely written and illuminated in the most sumptuous way, especially for the royal personages of France and Burgundy.