Master of the Brussels Initials

He[a] brought Italian influences to French manuscript illumination and in that way played an important role in the development of the so-called International Gothic style.

The artist's style was inventive, bright and lively, and G. Evelyn Hutchinson has also pointed out the unusually realistic depictions of minute wildlife found in his work.

The name is derived from a series of historiated initials in Les Très Belles Heures du duc de Berry [fr], a sumptuous book of hours which is part of the collections of the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels.

[13] The Master of the Brussels Initials has been described as "clearly inventive, or at least alert, open-minded and curious"[14] and played an important role in the development of the so-called International Gothic style.

[16] Meiss notes several iconographic details which were introduced in France from Italy (and a few which were ultimately derived from Byzantine or even Classical models) by the artist but also French influences upon his own art, and does not rule out that the Limbourg brothers, creators of some of the most famous of all medieval books, could have been directly inspired by the works of the Master of the Brussels Initials.

[18] This mix of French and Italian traditions, as developed in and around Paris, became characteristic of the International Gothic style during the early 15th century, and the Master of the Brussels Initials played an important role in this milieu.

[22] He argues that this is an example of a development within manuscript decoration towards a more naturalistic world view, "part of the same movement that produced the contemporary studies of optics and mechanics in England, France and Germany" and which continued with the production of formal natural history treaties in the 16th century.