The BRUGES MASTER OF 1482
Biography
The anonymous Flemish illuminator known as The Master of Bruges or The Master of 1482 was active at the court in Bruges in the 1480s and 1490s. He is named for his frontispiece illustration in a manuscript of Bartholomeus Anglicus’s Livre de la propriété des choses, written in Bruges in 1482 and today in the British Library. As Georges Dogaer has noted of the Bruges Master, ‘His hallmark is a colourful palette, most fully deployed in the costumes of his figures. One might say he consciously pursued the greatest possible variety in them.’ The Bruges Master of 1482 is known to have contributed illustrations to some ten different manuscripts, including at least four produced for the Flemish nobleman, courtier and noted bibliophile Louis de Bruges, Lord of Gruuthuse (c.1427-1492), who was one of the most significant patrons of illuminated manuscripts from Flemish workshops in the second half of the 15th century. The Bruges Master seems to have worked for courtly patrons on secular manuscripts, on such subjects as hunting and chivalry, for the most part written in French rather than Latin. As other scholars have observed of the Bruges Master, ‘This artist specialized in scenes of courtly ceremony, rendering complex interiors and group scenes, as well as panoramic landscapes, in a distinctive linear style animated by bright, saturated colors.’
