Ghent-Bruges school

The term was first used in 1891 by Belgian art historian Joseph Destrée, in his article Recherches sur les elumineurs flamands, and later the same year by French art historian Paul Durrieu; later it was used by German art historian Friedrich Winkler in his overview of Flemish illuminated manuscripts from the 15th and 16th centuries. Janet Backhouse has described the Ghent–Bruges school as "one of the last great styles of illumination." • Illustration — Flemish miniature (1510) with a realistic family at the foreground and a farmer and donkey going to the wind mill (at the back), (Breviarium Grimaldi - 1510).

The style developed around the mid-1470s to the 1480s through a break with the earlier, "courtly style" of about 1440 to 1474 which is closely associated with the aristocratic book collection of the Dukes of Burgundy Philip the Good and Charles the Bold. The patronage of Charles continued to play an important role, but the depiction of human figures in the miniatures went from "wooden, clumsily painted stock-figures" to realistic and increasingly large representations of people, eventually developing into half- or full-length portraits. Simultaneously, but probably unrelatedly, the border decoration of the manuscripts developed towards greater realism and came to occupy a larger part of the page. Both in the miniatures and the border decoration, artists displayed a "concern with verisimilitude" and the use of shaded, pastel colors.

• Alexander Bening • Simon Bening • Gerard Horenbout • Lucas Horenbout • Susanna Hornebolt • Jan Provoost • Levina Teerlinc • Master of the Flemish Boethius

• Book of Hours of Boussu • The Hours of Joanna I of Castile • Mayer van den Bergh Breviary • Rothschild Prayerbook

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