On the last page of the Missal is written: "Ich Niklas Glockendon zu Nurenberg hab dieses Bhuch illuminiert ond vollent im jar 1524."
The Prayer-book is similarly adorned with miniatures and brightly coloured borders. On the cover is a copy of the Archbishop's portrait, painted by Dürer, and on folio 1 is written by the Archbishop himself: "Anno domini MDXXXI completum est presens opus, Sabbato post 'Invocavit.' Albertus Cardinalis moguntinus manu propria scripsit."
Other Glockendon books exist in other libraries. Then there is the Beham Prayer-book at Aschaffenburg and a Bible in the library at Wolfenbüttel in two thick 4° volumes--a work well worth examination. At Nuremberg is the Service-book executed by Conrad Frankendorfer, of Nuremberg, in 1498.
In the British Museum is the fine German MS.--the Splendor Sous, a sixteenth century MS. (Harl. 3469).
In the National Library at Paris is the Prayer-book of William of Baden (10567-8) executed at Strassburg by Frederic Brentel in 1647.
Augsburg was producing illuminated Service-books ten years after Günther Zainer had set up the press in that city.
Munich, also, with the Penitential Psalms, etc., by Hans Mielich. Vienna, too, can show a magnificent Missal by Georg Hoefnagel, bearing the dates 1582 to 1590. Venice is represented in the work of Benedetto Bordone and the Ducali. Florence in the splendid Missals, etc., of Attavante and his contemporaries.
Milan shows the gorgeous Graduals of the Brera belonging to the sixteenth century and the Sforziadas of London and Paris. So we might pass from city to city almost all over Western Europe. The great Spanish choir-books were almost all produced under Philip II. Several Papal Service-books are represented in the fifteenth-and sixteenth-century examples of the scrap-book 21412 of the British Museum; and the works of Clovio, the most noted of Italian illuminators, all belong to the sixteenth century.
These instances are amply sufficient to prove that in every city in Europe where printing was in full practice the art of the illuminator continued to flourish until the progress of modern inventions and various processes, added to the general cheapening of books, led to its disuse. Its present application seems to be almost solely to diplomas and testimonials, and in point of quality, usually as poor and spiritless as the incapacity of most of its professors can make it.