Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/224

 212 HISTOEY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE high repute, indeed, that the miniature painters (' the illuminators ') formed a separate guild in several cities. Prayer-books especially were embellished by this species of art. In many convents, where the community num- bered forty or fifty, each nun possessed an illuminated office-book. It was a common thing for the greatest masters of painting to illuminate books destined as presents with pictures or pen-and-ink sketches. One of these, prepared by Dtirer for the Emperor Maximi- lian, is remarkable for its taste and originality and the grotesque humour of its designs. The principal homes of this art were Nuremberg and Eatisbon, where the Glockendon family and Berthold Furtmeyer were respectively the leading artists. The episcopal missal in five volumes which Furtmeyer exe- cuted for the Archbishop Bernhard von Bohr, of Salz- burg, in the year 1481, ranks among the finest and most original examples of this kind of work. In Suabia the monks distinguished themselves as miniature painters. From the year 1472 to 1492 Father Johannes Frank, of the Monastery of St. Ulrich, in Augsburg, was one of the best illuminators of his day. The Fathers Conrad Wagner, Stephen Degen, and Leonhard Wagner also worked with him. The monks Johann Keim, Maurus and Heinrich Molitor (1468) illuminated breviaries and devotional books in the Monastery of Scheyern. In Yornhach the Brother George Baum- gartener illustrated a history of the world. In Ebers- berg, Brother Vitus Auslasser illuminated a herbarium. In Nuremberg the Carmelite nun Mother Margaret (1450 to 1490) filled five folios with illuminated initials and pictures. In the same city, between the years 1491 and 1494, the Brothers-Minor completed an illuminated