William de Brailes
William de Brailes (active c. 1230 – c. 1260) was an English Early Gothic manuscript illuminator, presumably born in Brailes, Warwickshire. He signed two manuscripts, and apparently worked in Oxford, where he is documented from 1238 to 1252, owning property in Catte Street near the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, roughly on the site now occupied by the chapel of All Souls College, where various members of the book-trade lived. He was married, to Celena, but evidently also held minor orders, as at least three self-portraits show him with a clerical tonsure. This was  not unusual: by this date, and with the exception of the St. Albans monk Matthew Paris, the only other English illuminator of the period about whom we have significant personal information, most English illumination seems to have been done in commercial workshops run by laymen. Manuscripts. William de Brailes illuminated Bibles, psalters, a Book of Hours and secular texts, and may also have been a scribe. He is associated with a distinctive style, but other artists also worked in this manner, and distinguishing his hand from theirs is difficult. The style is characterised by energetic gesticulating figures, though with a  limited range of facial expression, and a concern for narrative. Ornamental bars stretch out from historiated initials to the top or sides of the text, a feature in transition from the Romanesque style to the mature Gothic style, where decorative borders run round the whole page. Larger miniatures often contain different scenes in separate roundels. Most of his manuscripts have a page size similar to that of a standard modern paperback, and reflect the trend towards the personal ownership of books by well off but not extravagant members of both clergy and laity. The principal works attributed to Brailes and  his workshop include: