Books of hours are Christian prayer books, which were used to pray the canonical hours. The use of a book of hours was especially popular in the Middle Ages, and as a result, they are the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and psalms, often with appropriate decorations, for Christian devotion. Illumination or decoration is minimal in many examples, often restricted to decorated capital letters at the start of psalms and other prayers, but books made for wealthy patrons may be extremely lavish, with full-page miniatures. These illustrations would combine picturesque scenes of country life with sacred images.
The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, or Très Riches Heures, is an illuminated manuscript that was created between c. 1412 and 1416. It is a book of hours, which is a Christian devotional book and a collection of prayers said at canonical hours. The manuscript was created for John, Duke of Berry, the brother of King Charles V of France, by Limbourg brothers Paul, Johan and Herman. The book is now MS 65 in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.
William de Brailes 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.
The Grandes Heures de Rohan is an illuminated manuscript book of hours, painted by the anonymous artist known as the Rohan Master, probably between 1418 and 1425, in the Gothic style. It contains the usual offices, prayers and litanies in Latin, along with supplemental texts, decorated with 11 full page, 54 half page, and 227 small miniatures, decorated with tempera paints and gold leaf. The book margins are decorated with Old Testament miniatures with captions in Old French, in the style of a Bible moralisée. The full page illuminations are renowned for the highly emotional and dramatic portrayal of the agonies of Christ and the grief of the Virgin. According to Millard Meiss, "The Rohan Master cared less about what people do than what they feel. Whereas his great predecessors excelled in the description of the novel aspects of the natural world, he explored the realm of human feeling." Meiss concludes that the Rohan Master was the "greatest expressionist in 15th century France." The manuscript is currently housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France.
The Ravenelle Painter, also known as the Master of the Book of Hours of Johannete Ravenelle, the Ravenelle Master or the First Master of the Bible Historiale of Jean de Berry, was a French manuscript illuminator active between 1390 and 1405. Little is known about him. In a 2002 dissertation, Eva Lindqvist Sandgren used stylistic comparison to identify this artist as the illuminator of a book of hours now in the Uppsala University Library, the Ravenelle Hours. This identification is now widely accepted. An earlier notname for the same artist derives from a manuscript of the Bible Historiale, now held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, in which he painted several miniatures. The manuscript was once owned by John, Duke of Berry, and with most books containing other work ascribed to the artist seems to have been produced in Paris. This would indicate that the artist lived and worked there, producing large secular works as well as religious treatises written in vernacular French.
The British Library is a research library in London that is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the United Kingdom. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The Stowe manuscripts are a collection of about two thousand Irish, Anglo-Saxon and later medieval manuscripts, nearly all now in the British Library. The manuscripts date from 1154 to the end of the 14th century.
Janet Moira Backhouse was an English manuscripts curator at the British Museum, and a leading authority in the field of illuminated manuscripts.
The Isabella Breviary is a late 15th-century illuminated manuscript now in the British Library, London. Queen Isabella I of Castile was given the manuscript shortly before 1497 by her ambassador Francisco de Rojas to commemorate the double marriage of her children and the children of Emperor Maximilian of Austria and Duchess Mary of Burgundy.
The Petites Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry is an illuminated book of hours commissioned by John, Duke of Berry between 1375 and 1385–90. It is known for its ornate miniature leaves and border decorations.
The Hours of Philip the Bold is a late 14th-century illuminated book of hours produced in Paris for Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (1363-1404). It contains illustrated calendars, figured initials and 11 large miniatures with ivy borders, following the Paris liturgy. The manuscript has a devotional use. Philip reportedly recited his daily prayers from this manuscript. His hours, which contains almost 200 images, is one of the most worldly manuscripts to survive from the library of the Burgundian Dukes. It is now MS. 3-1954 in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
The Royal manuscripts are one of the "closed collections" of the British Library, consisting of some 2,000 manuscripts collected by the sovereigns of England in the "Old Royal Library" and given to the British Museum by George II in 1757. They are still catalogued with call numbers using the prefix "Royal" in the style "Royal MS 2. B. V". As a collection, the Royal manuscripts date back to Edward IV, though many earlier manuscripts were added to the collection before it was donated. Though the collection was therefore formed entirely after the invention of printing, luxury illuminated manuscripts continued to be commissioned by royalty in England as elsewhere until well into the 16th century. The collection was expanded under Henry VIII by confiscations in the Dissolution of the Monasteries and after the falls of Henry's ministers Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. Many older manuscripts were presented to monarchs as gifts; perhaps the most important manuscript in the collection, the Codex Alexandrinus, was presented to Charles I in recognition of the diplomatic efforts of his father James I to help the Eastern Orthodox churches under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. The date and means of entry into the collection can only be guessed at in many if not most cases. Now the collection is closed in the sense that no new items have been added to it since it was donated to the nation.
The Bedford Hours is a French late medieval book of hours. It dates to the early fifteenth century (c. 1410–30); some of its miniatures, including the portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, have been attributed to the Bedford Master and his workshop in Paris. The Duke and Duchess of Bedford gave the book to their nephew Henry VI in 1430. It is in the British Library, catalogued as Add MS 18850.
The Pseudo-Jacquemart was an anonymous master illuminator active in Paris and Bourges between 1380 and 1415. He owed his name to his close collaboration with painter Jacquemart de Hesdin.
Eleanor Patterson Spencer was an American art historian and college professor.
The Master of Jouvenel was an anonymous master illuminator active between 1447 and 1460. The painter, to whom many manuscripts are attributed, was undoubtedly at the head of a workshop, also called Groupe Jouvenel from which the Master of Boccace of Geneva came from, or the Master of Boethius. The painter owes his name to a manuscript in the Mare Historium commissioned by Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins, for which his workshop produced 730 miniatures.
Sir John Tobin (1763–1851) was a Manx merchant based in Liverpool. He was a merchant seaman who became a sea captain, making voyages both as a slave trader and as a privateer against French shipping. He was Mayor of Liverpool in 1819–1820. In later life he was involved in canal and railway development.
The Master of the Burgundian Prelates was an anonymous master illuminator active in Burgundy between 1470 and 1490. He owes his name to several works commissioned from him by Burgundian bishops and abbots.
Gothic book illustration, or gothic illumination, originated in France and England around 1160/70, while Romanesque forms remained dominant in Germany until around 1300. Throughout the Gothic period, France remained the leading artistic nation, influencing the stylistic developments in book illustration. During the transition from the late Gothic period to the Renaissance, book illustration lost its status as one of the most important artistic genres in the second half of the 15th century, due to the widespread adoption of printing.
