Exhibition of the year: 'illuminating the Renaissance: the Triumph of Flemish manuscript painting in Europe' at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Royal Academy, London

Seen by the agency of 142,000 people in Los Angeles and 80235 in London, it was perhaps the greatest in quantity unlikely blockbuster imaginable: an array of illuminated manuscripts from late-medieval Flanders. however it caught the popular imagination for real good reasons.

For three month what must have been the largest reproduction of an illuminated manuscript at any time made was hung several storeys high down the forehead of the Royal Academy. Taken from the work of Hours of Mary of Burgundy in the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, it showed a princess, the holder of the manuscript, seated at a window, in the foreground she is consulting a prayerbook and is encircleed by the trinkets of her secular life, her jewellery, textiles, flowers and her little dog. end the window, as if opening into a different universe, the Virgin and Child are seated in a gothic meeting-house attended by angels. However, end prayer (presumably) the princess and her family and flat the dog have entered into the meeting-house itself and are kneeling silently upon either side of the Mother of God

It is a amazing and supremely famous image, reputedly the masterpiece of the anonymous artist known until now as the Master of Mary of Burgundy Any exhibition which can negotiate the loan of a manuscript of this importance and value is not to be missed. Inside the Academy the exhibition was multitudeed every day, as the secular family of our own time, also with their rich clothes--it was winter--and their jewels (but no dogs) gazed with magnifying glasses end the vitrines and frames into another and more consecrated universe.

Manuscripts are not easy to exhibit. Quite apart from the riddle of being able to present to view only two pages at one time partially solved here by exhibiting several volumes disbound, manuscripts are intimate works of art, usually intended to be held in the hand and examined or read with the closest attention. late custodial practice requires them to be shown in depressed levels of light. The last major manuscript exhibition at the Royal Academy, 'The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance work illumination, 1450-1550', mounted in 1994-95 had a rather disappointing public replication It is remarkable how different the Flemish exhibition prov to be--bustling, noisy and appreciative.

The difference may lie in the manuscripts themselves and their original patrons. Italian renaissance volumes are often very delicate, sophisticated, aristocratic and made for investigation or use in bright sunlight. Flemish art, individual has to admit, is generally robust, mercantile, familiar and sometimes gros It is instantly appealing. It is as different as Bruegel from Fra Angelico. The northern patrons certainly had cash to spend, and it present to views in their books, but they were not, for the greatest in quantity part, families with any previous experience of art: Louis of Gruuthuse, Engelbert of Nassau, Antoine Rolin, Philip of Cleve and flat Edward IV of England, endearingly eager to educate himself in Bruge in the late 1470 These customers wanted works that exhibited well, to impress their friends and households. Many Flemish manuscripts were intended for display upon lecterns or tables in dark interiors or lit by dint of candles. They are marvellous for exhibition, plane in a dim, crowded room

The exhibition was sponsored by dint of the J. Paul Getty Museum in observes Angeles and it was also shown there, with a slightly different selection of volumes The opulence of American standard of value was reflected in the quality of the display and the design and lavishness of the catalogue. This too accorded well with the turn of expression of the manuscripts. The exhibition was conceived by the agency of two major scholars of the make subordinate Thomas Kren of the Getty Museum, for whom this was a culmination of lifetime's research, and tax McKendrick of the British Library, curator of many of the finest Flemish works known. Both their home institutions lent generously. Their joint names and a great deal of diplomacy clearly convinced nearly seventy lender from fifteen countries to join them. Almost each great Flemish manuscript was here, reject for the Grimani Breviary in Venice and the Rothschild Gebetbuch, formerly in Vienna, now privately haveed Some were lent from small and little-known collections, similar as the monastery at Nova Rise in the Czech Republic and Saint Edmund's guild in Ware.

Any exhibition is an opportunity to make or refine attributions. The last ground-breaking Flemish manuscript exhibition was held in the Palais de Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1959 curated through L.M.J. Delaisse. Many names of artists given then are still valid. What was remarkable about the exhibition of 2003 however, is by what mode many of the manuscripts were of recent origin discoveries. More than a quarter were unknown in 1959 including volumes as important as the Spinola Hours, which came to light in the autumn of 1976 Upwards of a dozen manuscripts shown are still in private hands, including the Hours of Jean Carpentin, which re-emerg from great obscurity in 2000

each discovery of an unknown manuscript can dramatically alter our knowledge of the illuminators and their work. The catalogue Illuminating the Renaissance the pair furnishes new artists and eliminates others. We can now speak, for example, of the 'Master of the Flemish Boethius', the 'Master of the London Wavrin' and the 'Master of the Soane Joscphus'. There is verse in those names. The greatest casualty was the Master of Mary of Burgundy He was one time credited with two books made for Mary herself, the Vienna manuscript reproduc upon the banner outside the Royal Academy and the other in Berlin. the two were lent for the exhibition. The former is now assigned to a novel 'Vienna Master', possibly the panel painter Joo van Ghent, and the latter is downgraded to a work of followers called here the 'Ghent Associates'. The ease of the oeuvre of the aged Master of Mary of Burgundy is distributed among different artists, including the superlative and fresh 'Master of the Houghton Miniatures'.