Renaissance Illuminators in Paris

Johannes Gutenberg had perfected at Mainz a workable press using movable type to print books by the 1450s at latest, an invention quickly seized upon in the Italian cities and, a bit more cautiously (by 1470), in Paris. Yet the production of manuscript books, and the careers of those who wrote them and of the artists who painted in them, continued in Paris for two centuries and more after Gutenberg's revolution in book-making. The Rouses follow the traces of this continuity in the midst of change. They document the various stratagems that Parisian manuscript artisans eventually adopted in their attempt to survive, as the market for manuscripts and the demand for their services inexorably dwindled. In its death throes, the process ended with a brilliant supernova of gorgeous manuscripts made for the Sun King in the eighteenth century.