The manuscripts of ´The Master of the School Books´

Three richly illuminated manuscripts were produced between the third and fourth quarters of the 15th century for the young Maximilian Habsburg, later the emperor Maximilian I. (born 1459, 1493-1519). Today these belong to the Austrian National Library at Vienna. These three `schoolbooks`, a pattern book of scripts containing prayers and other texts and two grammar books, were illuminated by one of the most important Austrian artists, whom art historians call `The Master of the Schoolbooks`("Lehrbüchermeister"). Today we know of more than 30 manuscripts from his hand, among them many prayer books, breviaries and missals, generally ordered by important patrons. Also there are some twenty manuscripts which are stylistically related to the work of the master. This exceptionally rich body of surviving work by the artist and his circle will enable the project, to reconstruct the illuminator`s personal artistic development. One of the main concerns of the project will be to research the artistic roots of the master, which remain largely unknown at present. It will study the working methods of the illuminators, their workshop structures, and their collaborators, the scribes and other prominent illuminators. Also important will be the investigation of the social class of the patrons in general. The methodological bases for the project will follow the currently recognized international guidelines for the cataloguing of medieval illuminated manuscripts. These guidelines, deriving much from Austrian research, reflect interdisciplinary scholarship and pay attention to all codicological aspects of the manuscripts. The art-historical issues will involve stylistic analysis, the evolution of decorative and calligraphic features and iconographic study. The work of the "Lehrbüchermeister" was created at one of the major transformations in the development of late gothic painting. It combines many new stylistic ideas and is also influenced in some aspects by panel-painting and the illustration of early printed books.

The Master of the Schoolbooks, named for the illuminations he painted in the schoolbooks of the later emperor Maximilian I, was the leading Vienna illuminator of the second half of the fifteenth century. As this project reveals, this illuminator was educated in the 1440s in Vienna. His main teacher was very likely the Moses Master, a virtually unknown Vienna illuminator whose individual style (exhibited in his underdrawings that were made visible with infrared-reflectography in this project) did much to guide the art of his pupil. Additionally, certain stylistic characteristics present in his later work, probably adopted from the work of other Vienna illuminators, make it likely that the Master of the Schoolbooks was not only trained in Vienna but was also working there at a very early stage of his career. Examples of his work in dated manuscripts, watermarks, and stylistic aspects prove that this master was active between ca. 1450 and 1469. His client base was relatively small: the staff of the Vienna University, the canons of Klosterneuburg just a few miles outside the walls of Vienna, and the imperial court of Friedrich III and its circle. One exception was a Missal commissioned by Mathias Corvinus, King of Hungary, for the Dominican convent of Vienna. The restricted number of clients, along with the very few remaining original bindings-all of which were executed by the Viennese bookbinder Mathias or his followers-might indicate that the Master of the Schoolbooks was working exclusively for Vienna and Klosterneuburg. Research into the manuscript scribes and the penwork filigree has provided valuable insights. The manuscripts executed for Klosterneuburg are usually written by Klosterneuburg scribes and decorated with typical Klosterneuburg filligree, while the university manuscripts were written by university scribes and decorated with university-type filligree. Even some of the imperial manuscripts were written by chancellery scribes. From this we can conclude that the Master of the Schoolbooks was not really involved with the production of the books himself. It appears that various workshops engaged him to paint only the miniatures, in keeping with the widespread system of manuscript production operating in central Europe in the late Middle Ages. There is no indication of a large workshop run by this illuminator. In his early years the Master of the Schoolbooks sometimes collaborated with two other Viennese illuminators, but his followers, whose work did not achieve his high quality, never worked with him on a project. After he was no longer active illuminators from other parts took over his clients. The first results of this project were published in the commentary of the facsimile of the Abecedarium of Maximilian I in 2004. A book about the Master of the Schoolbooks will be published soon.