The Master of 1328 was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 illuminator

Illuminated manuscript

An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...

 active in the area around Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

 from about 1320 until 1340. His name is derived from the date on a trademan's register, the Matricola dei merciai, now in the Civic Museum in Bologna; his hand may also be discerned in a set of choir books which were painted for the Dominican

Dominican Order

The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...

 convent

Convent

A convent is either a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters, or nuns, or the building used by the community, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion...

 in that city; this group of works is earlier, and can be dated to the first half of the 1320s, as can a copy of Gratian

Gratian (jurist)

Gratian, was a 12th century canon lawyer from Bologna. He is sometimes incorrectly referred to as Franciscus Gratianus, Johannes Gratianus, or Giovanni Graziano. The dates of his birth and death are unknown....

's Decretals now in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

. At the same time the Master participated in the creation of the Rhetorica ad Erennium now held at Holkam Hall in Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

. Stylistically, while he bears the influence of his local contemporaries, he was evidently also aware of the later paintings of Giotto; he was also the first to apply Giotto's new rules of painting to Bolognese manuscript illumination in anything approaching a regular pattern. Like the Illustratore

Illustratore

The Illustratore was an Italian illuminator active between 1330 and 1347. Almost nothing is known about him. Due to similarities between the two, his output was first designated as separate from that of Niccolò da Bologna; indeed, Erbach von Fürstenau at first called him the Pseudo-Niccolò, so...

, with whom he worked on occasion he reached the height of his career in the 1330s, concentrating on the decoration of legal texts.