One of the Getty Museum's recent acquisitions is a Design for a Quatrefoil... (ca. 1475-1490) by a member of the workshop of the Master of the Housebook (act. ca. 1475-1490), one of the Fifteenth Century's most prolific graphic artists. While most designs for stained-glass windows in the Late Middle Ages were religious in nature, the Housebook Master (a draftsman, printmaker and painter) succeeded in introducing secular imagery into their subject matter. Sections of this quatrefoil or four-lobed design illustrate scenes from amour courtois (courtly love), the complex code of erotic, philosophical, religious and social ideas that dictated the behavior of ladies and their paramours in medieval Europe. Courtly love's prescriptions were popularized by the lyric poetry of troubadours; its tenets originated in the ducal and princely courts of southern France at the end of the Eleventh Century. The Design for a Quatrefoil... depicts scenes of everyday life at the end of the Middle Ages. After the Housebook Master's follower drew these fine compositions, a glass painter reproduced them on clear and stained glass.
"Made for Manufacture: Drawings for Sculpture and the Decorative Arts" is on view from February 6 through May 20, 2007 at the J. Paul Getty Museum (Telephone: 310-440-7330; Website). The museum is open Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM and Friday and Saturday 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Admission is free. Parking costs $8.00.
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From your Guide: Stan Parchin, Senior Correspondent for Museums and Special Exhibitions, is a specialist in ancient, late-medieval and Renaissance art and history, and a regular contributor to About Art History. You may read all of his Special Exhibition and Catalogue Reviews here.