[Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis]

• Original object type: Artefact

Description

Some front and some rear flyleaves are on modern vellum.

Decoration: 8 full-page (inserted) miniatures, 7 historiated initials of 9-lines with full decorated borders, 41 historiated initials with border decorations, and several decorated initials with curling acanthus leaves and pen-flourishes. The Master of the Adair Hours (ca. 1490) is responsible for the small, but very detailed initials and accompanying border decorations that are of extremely high quality. He is also responsible for the seven large historiated initials in the beginning of the main text sections: these are sometimes unconventional in choices of subjects, and some are miniatures with initials placed in the upper-right corner. One of the Masters of the Dark Eyes (ca. 1500-1510) is responsible for the full-page miniatures in the beginning of hours and prayers, which were inserted later, but planned from the outset, as can be deduced from the choices made within the pictorial cycle of the border decorations.

Written in littera textualis.

Principal contents: ff. 8r-16v Calendar (Utrecht); ff. 18r-36v Hours of the Eternal Wisdom; ff. 38r-59v Hours of the Holy Spirit; ff. 61r-85v Hours of the Holy Cross; ff. 87r-119v Hours of the Virgin; ff. 121r-141v Hours of All Saints; ff. 143r-147r Prayers (in another hand); ff. 149r-165r Penitential Psalms and Litany; ff. 165v-168v Prayers; ff. 170r-198v Office of the dead; ff. 198v-200v Suffrages.

From the library of Lord Brotherton. He had purchased the manuscript from the London book seller Chas. J. Sawyer in the 1920s.

See for a fuller description: N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) pp. 38-40. See also: H. L. M. Defoer, A. S. Korteweg, W. C. M. Wüstefeld, The Golden Age of Dutch Manuscript Painting (Stuttgart: Belser for Rijksmuseum Het Catharijneconvent Utrecht, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1989) no. 97, pp. 280-282.

• Date range: [ca. 1490 and ca. 1500-1510]
• Date: 1500
• Collection: Medieval Manuscripts
• Physical Identifier: BC MS 7