Renaissance

Picturing Piety: The Book of Hours

275 pages, paperback, 300 x 190 mm, 150 colour illustrations
PRICE: £25.00
ISBN: 9781903470657

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Roger Wieck with Sandra Hindman and Ariane Bergeron-Foote

This catalogue of Books of Hours, the 'best seller' of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, presents two dozen Books of Hours mostly dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Examples from France, the Netherlands, and Belgium are presented chronologically with illustrations in colour for each entry.

Highlights include a fine early Dutch Book of Hours with illuminations closely related to those by the artists of the Utrecht History Bibles. There is also a lavish Book of Hours signed with marks by one of the Masters of Otto von Moredrecht; and a high-quality Parisian Book of Hours with an unusual sequence of miniatures by the Master of Jacques de Besancon. Many of these Books are previously entirely unknown and unpublished. An introductorry essay explores how illuminated Books of Hours encouraged their readers to picture piety through reading of texts accompanies by visual aid.

The Windsor Shahnama of 1648

The Shahnama (‘Book of Kings’), which chronicles the history of Iran from the Creation to the Islamic conquest, was written by the poet Firdawsi at the turn of the 11th century. Its central importance to Iranian culture is reflected in the thousands of copies made since then, many superbly illustrated and produced for royal and other powerful patrons. One of these copies, presented to Queen Victoria in 1839, is one of the finest treasures among the collection of Islamic manuscripts now in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. More

Tacuinum Sanitatis: An Early Renaissance Guide to Health

This book is a complete catalogue and commentary on a remarkable series of 130 coloured drawings executed in North Italy, almost certainly Padua, in the 1450s by a group of artists in the circle of Andrea Mantegna. The drawings illustrate subjects from the Tacuinum Sanitatis or Table of Health. Subjects touched on include medicine, sport, farming, animal husbandry, natural history, shopping, cooking and manufacturing – constituting an extraordinary record of everyday life (and life style) in early Renaissance Italy. This manuscript is one of four known series of the kind, and the only one not published. More

Islamic Calligraphy

The Islamic manuscripts and manuscript leaves gathered here are often of great antiquity, ranging from the eighth to the sixteenth century; most are in Kufic. There are also pottery, metalwork and woodwork examples bearing calligraphy. An impressive illustration of the many beauties of Islamic script. More

The Olivetan Gradual: Its Place in 15th-century Lombard Manuscript Illumination

This illuminated manuscript, a gradual of large size which the whole congregation of monks could see and read as they sang in choir (just as they are shown doing in an illustration in the manuscript itself), was previously unknown to scholars and has only recently come to light. It was clearly produced for a monastery of the Olivetan order, a branch of the Benedictines with a particular reverence for the Virgin Mary – probably Santa Maria di Baggio near Milan. More

The Eckstein Shahnama: An Ottoman Book of Kings

The great Persian poet Firdausi’s epic Shahnama, or ‘Books of Kings’, written at the turn of the eleventh century CE, is a seamless tapestry of historical and legendary material prominently featuring battles and individual struggles with fierce demons and enemy champions. "This book is a vital contribution to the understanding of Asiatic art, its confluences, and its narrative axes ..." (Sixteenth-Century Journal, Fall 2009) More

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