Manuscripts
Picturing Piety: The Book of Hours
275 pages, paperback, 300 x 190 mm
PRICE: £25.00
ISBN: 9781903470657
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 Many of these Books are previously entirely unknown and unpublished.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.
Around 1800, an anonymous engraver in Sharanakula, a small temple place on the southern coast of Orissa, illustrated a palm-leaf anthology of love poems. The one hundred Sanskrit quatrains, which are said to be the work of the 7th-century poet Amaru, describe the behaviour of enamoured couples, their longing for each other, the lovers’ anxieties, their ecstatic joy as well as their doubts and sorrows. More
This catalogue discusses and illustrates a wide variety of Chinese books, dating from the sixth to the nineteenth century -- some very rare. More
The selection consists of Qur’ans, illustrated Islamic manuscripts and scientific and religious manuscripts. All are handsomely illustrated and fully discussed. The manuscripts are from all parts of the Islamic world and represent the finest achievements of the form. More