Simon Marmion

To a poet of the next generation, Jean Lemaire de Belges, Simon Marmion was simply 'the prince of illumination.' That was high praise in a world where the most luxurious pictures were painted inside books rather than on walls.

Marmion worked at Amiens and then, from 1458 until his death, at Valenciennes, on the edge of France and the Burgundian lands. He made both altar panels and illuminated manuscripts, prized for the softness of his light and for faces that carry real feeling. Among his grand commissions was an elaborate copy of the Grandes Chroniques de France, the official chronicle of the French kings, made for the Burgundian court.

Because medieval illuminators rarely signed their work, almost everything credited to Marmion today is attached to his name by comparison and argument, without a documented signature.