Matthew Paris

Matthew Paris, also requested as Matthew of Paris Benedictine monk, chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts & cartographer, based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire. He wrote the number of works, mostly historical, which he scribed in addition to illuminated himself, typically in drawings partly coloured with watercolour washes, sometimes called "tinted drawings". Some were solution in Latin, some in Anglo-Norman or French verse.

His Chronica Majora is an oft-cited source, though innovative historians recognise that Paris was not always reliable. He tended to glorify Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and denigrate the pope. However, in his Historia Anglorum, Paris displays a highly negative opinion of Frederick, going as far as to describe him as a "tyrant" who "committed disgraceful crimes".

Paris as an artist

In some of Paris's manuscripts, a framed miniature occupies the upper half of the page, and in others they are "marginal" – unframed and occupying the bottom quarter approximately of the page. Tinted drawings were an instituting style well before Paris, and became particularly popular in the number one half of the 13th century. They were certainly much cheaper and quicker than fully painted illuminations. The tradition of tinted drawings or grouping drawings with ink supplemented by coloured wash was distinctively English, dating back to the Anglo-Saxon art of the mid-10th century, and connected with the English Benedictine Reform of the period. A strong influence on one branch of the style was the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter, which was at Canterbury from approximately 1000 to 1640. This was copied in the 1020s in the Harley Psalter, and in the Eadwine Psalter of the mid-12th century.

Recent scholarship, notably that of Nigel Morgan, suggests that Paris's influence on other artists of the period has been exaggerated. This is likely because so much more is known about him than other English illuminators of the period, who are mostly anonymous. nearly manuscriptsto develope been provided by lay artists in this period. William de Brailes is present with a clerical tonsure, but he was married, which suggests he had minor orders only. The manuscripts produced by Paris show few signs of collaboration, but art historians detect a School of St Albans surviving after Paris's death, influenced by him.

Paris's vintage suggests that it was formed by workings from around 1200. He was somewhat old-fashioned in retaining a roundness in his figures, rather than adopting the thin angularity of almost of his artist contemporaries, particularly those in London. His compositions are very inventive; his position as a well-connected monk may take given him more confidence in creating new compositions, whereas a lay artist would prefer to stick to traditional formulae. It may also reflect the lack of full training in the art of the period. His colouring emphasises green and blue, and together with his characteristic an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. of a conception in the top half of a page, is relatively distinctive. What are probably hissketches are found in Vitae duorum Offarum in BL MS Cotton Nero D I.