A Follower of Jean Pucelle in England

* This article is based on a portion of my doctoral dissertation, “The Psalter of Robert de Lisle,” Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1964. It is a pleasure to record here my gratitude for the financial aid of the Institute of Fine Arts and the American Association of University Women, and my appreciation of the generous scholarly advice of Professors Harry Bober, Otto Pächt and John Plummer in the preparation of the dissertation.

Abstract

The name of Jean Pucelle has come to symbolize the introduction of the arte nuovo of Giotto and Duccio into northern European painting. In the words of Erwin Panofsky, “if any major event in the history of art can be credited to one individual, the initiation of this process must be ascribed to an artist to whom I shall continue to refer by the traditional appellation of Jean Pucelle, active at Paris from ca. 1320.”¹ Whether “Jean Pucelle” in fact identifies a single or a composite artistic personality remains uncertain. Nevertheless, a general conception of the Pucelle style has been developed on the basis of the three manuscripts of the 1320's that are connected with this name: the Belleville Breviary, the Hours of Jeanne d'Évreux and the Billyng Bible.² Whatever part Jean Pucelle himself had in these three works, as a group they present a number of features that may be called proto-Renaissance: sculpturally modeled figures; three-dimensional treatment of space; and a new form of psychological expression.³