Leaf from the Hours of Louis XII
A leaf from a French illuminated prayer book, the Hours of Louis XII, painted by Jean Bourdichon around 1498 and held by the J. Paul Getty Museum, made for a devotional reader of the French court. The picture shows a pale nude woman with long golden hair standing in a pool beside a stone fountain with a lion's head, while a formal garden with clipped hedges and tall trees stretches behind her toward classical architecture and a small figure in a balcony; a designer might take its flat, jewel-bright colour fields, the tiled pool pattern, and the calm, geometric garden layout.
