Many manuscripts of the early part of the sixteenth century have elaborate architectural borders, consisting of tiers of canopied niches containing statuettes, all executed in fluid, _mat_ gold. _Harsh colours._ The use of a very harsh emerald green is characteristic of this period of decadence in France and in Flanders; and generally there is a want of harmony of colour in the miniatures of this time, in which gaudiness rather than real splendour gradually becomes the main characteristic. _Renaissance style._ At the end of the fifteenth century the influence of the classical Renaissance of art in Italy began to affect the French manuscript illuminations, and especially those by Parisian miniaturists. The introduction of architectural forms of Italian classic style into the backgrounds of miniatures was the first sign of this, examples of which occur as early as the year 1475 or 1480. Fig. 27 shows a characteristic example of a French miniature executed under Italian influence. This is a scene of the marriage of the B. V. Mary to the elderly Joseph, who holds in his hand the dry rod which had blossomed. One of the unsuccessful suitors is breaking his rod across his knee, as in Raphael's early _Sposalizio_ in the Brera gallery at Milan. [Illustration: Fig. 27. Miniature of the marriage of the B. V. Mary from a French manuscript of about 1480, with details in the style of the Italian Renaissance.] _Horae of Jehan Foucquet._ The painting represented in Fig. 27 is from a manuscript _Book of Hours_ illuminated by the famous miniaturist Jehan Foucquet of Tours, whose services were secured by Louis XI. from 1470 to 1475. This manuscript _Horae_, which has been horribly mutilated, the miniatures being cut out of the text, was originally executed for Maître Etienne Chevalier. Foucquet and other French illuminators of his time were largely influenced not only by Italian art, but also by the Flemish school of miniaturists who were followers of Memlinc and Rogier van der Weyden; but by the end of the fifteenth century the Italian influence reigned supreme and soon destroyed all remaining traces of the older mediaeval or Gothic style. Fig. 28 shows part of a border from the same MS. that is illustrated in Fig. 25 on page 134. [Illustration: Fig. 28. Border illumination from a _Book of Hours_ by Jacquemart de Odin; see fig. 25.] CHAPTER X. PRINTED BOOKS WITH PAINTED ILLUMINATIONS. During the last few years of the fifteenth century and the first twenty or thirty years of the sixteenth century Paris was remarkable for the production of a beautiful class of books which form a link between printed books and illuminated manuscripts. _Paris Horae on vellum._ _Effect of colouring._