Exposition des primitifs francais
This 1904 Paris catalogue, published by the Gazette des beaux-arts and compiled by Georges Lafenestre, reproduces early French paintings and tapestries in halftone plates for an art-historical readership. The four plates show a devotional panel with the Virgin, a child and donors in an arched interior, a sideways-printed pair of panels of seated women, a verdure tapestry of standing figures among foliage, and a crowded scene of figures around a stone basin before a walled town. A designer could take from them the dense, flat compositions, patterned foliage and muted tonal range typical of Gothic-era French art.
