Hidden Treasures: Illuminated Manuscripts from Midwestern Collections | Page 9

Book of Hours, Limoges
Use, with Pentecost

Psalter-Hours with
Commendation of a Soul

French, ca. 1475–ca. 1500
Ink, tempera, and gold on parchment

Netherlandish, made for the English market,
mid–15th century–1549

Private Collection, fols. 84v–85

Ink, tempera, and gold on parchment

The miniature shows the Virgin kneeling under a
baldachin and holding a prayer book, surrounded by
adoring disciples as the dove of the Holy Spirit enters
the room on golden rays. This image, while providing a immediate visual model to the user of this book,
introduces the Hours of the Holy Spirit—a short
series of invocations, prayers, and hymns recited to
seek the aid of the third person of the Trinity.

Underwood Prayer Book Collection at
Nashotah House

Literary,
Historical, and
Legal Manuscripts

The only miniature in this volume shows two
angels lifting a small naked figure in a cloth,
which is the figural representation of the commendation of a soul. This image accompanies a
series of prayers and psalms that were recited by
a priest at the bed of a dying person.

Italian, ca. 1460–1470
Standing Female Saint
from Jacobus de Voragine,
Golden Legend, ca. 1275—1285
Master of Monza
Tempera on parchment
Les Enluminures Ltd., Chicago, Ill.
These two miniatures and numerous others that
survive were cut out of one of the earliest illuminated manuscripts of the Golden Legend.

Prayerbook of Cardinal
Archduke Albert VII of
Austria with Crucifixion

Attributed to Jean Poyet

Flemish (Brussels), 1597

French (Tours), active 1483–1497

Tempera and gold on parchment

Standing Friar Saint from
Jacobus de Voragine,
Golden Legend, ca. 1275—1285

Tempera and gold on parchment

Private Collection

Master of Monza

Lent by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The
William Hood Dunwoody Fund, 14.12

According to the colophon, this prayerbook was
written and illuminated by the Cistercian nuns of the
monastery of La Cambre, on the order of their abbess, in Brussels in 1597 for the Cardinal Archduke
Albert VII of Austria, who was the son of the Holy
Roman Emperor Maximilian II and the nephew of
King Philip II of Spain. The miniature facing a prayer
to the heart of Christ crucified shows the Cardinal
embracing the body of the crucified Christ as he
removes it from the Cross, an image that reflects the
intensely empathetic strain of personal piety that had
developed by the end of the sixteenth century.

Italian (active in Lombardy), ca. 1270–1290

fig 6
Folio from a Book of Hours
with Gospel of Mark
Flemish (Ghent-Bruges), ca. 1500–1510
Ink, tempera, and gold on parchment
Spencer Museum of Art, The University of
Kansas, Letha Churchill Walker Memorial Art
Fund, 1980.0021
The illusionistic painted border of naturalistically rendered flowers, fruits, birds, and insects is the hallmark
of manuscripts illuminated in Ghent and Bruges in the
late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This page
contains the beginning of the Gospel Lesson of Mark.

fig 7

Ink, tempera, and gold on parchment
Department of Special Collections, Memorial
Library, University of Wisconsin–Madison, MS
162, fols. 18v–19

Italian (active in Lombardy), ca. 1270–1290

Miniature from a Book
of Hours with Virgin and
Christ Child, ca. 1490—1500

Jean Poyet was a French illuminator working in
Tours at the end of the fifteenth century, whose artistry was sought for commissions for Queen Anne
of Brittany and other royal patrons. Conceived as
an independently framed picture within a Book
of Hours, this type of miniature illustrates an innovation introduced by Poyet and others working
in the Loire valley. The Virg