The Boucicaut Masters (15th-century illuminated manuscripts)

This paper examines the strategies and achievements of independent illuminators in early fifteenth-century Paris through consideration of manuscripts associated with the Boucicaut Master. The prodigious output of Boucicaut manuscripts, many of them Books of Hours, was accomplished by a group of loosely affiliated illuminators trained to work in a common style. Indeed the coordination of the production of large numbers of manuscripts in a consistent style can be considered one of the greatest achievements of the Boucicaut illuminators. Having no sustained connections with particular court patrons, the artists successfully adapted their work to the demands and resources of a broad and diverse clientele. These very conditions, it is here argued, fostered the artistic innovations for which the Boucicaut manuscripts are famous.