The coming exhibition cif French art at Burlington House will
doubtless include some of the fascinating miniatures by Foucquet (1420-81), who worked for Charles VII and Louis Xi and who painted Pope -Eugenius IV. It is fortunate, them that the first really serious study, in English, of this important and delightful master has appeared in-Jehan Foucquet : Native of Tours, by Mr. Trenchard Cox (Faber, 21s.). Here may be found all that is definitely known about the painter, with a fair summary -of the interminable controversy that has raged round him fora century in France, and with fifty-one-e.xcellent reproductions of miniatures, paintings and drawings by or attributable to leoucqUet. Mr. Cox is a very honest scholar- and is most careful to distinguish_between the few facts and the numerous conjectures that have been put forward by
Comte Durrieu and others. Foucquet's miniatures illustrating Josephus and devotional books, such as the " Hours " ' of Etienne Chevalier, are not merely delicate and firmly drawn but also have a rare breadth of style and show a feeling for character. He pictures the France that he luiew, and especi- ally the places and people of the Loire valley, so that his work is of absorbing interest from the historic as well as the artistic standpoint. In the Persian exhibition the public discovered Bihzad the miniaturist, but they will find in Foucquet a still greater artist.
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