Bifolio from a Book of Hours: Adoration of the Magi (recto); Text (verso) (c. 1415): Art, History and Details

Bifolio from a Book of Hours: Adoration of the Magi (recto); Text (verso) (c. 1415) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Boucicaut Master (French, Paris, active about 1410–25).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Books of hours were devotional books popular in the Middle Ages. Meant for laypeople, or those not in the clergy, they were used at home and contained daily prayers as well as prayers for specific occasions, such as death, plague, warfare, travel, or bad weather. The heart of every book of hours is the Hours of the Virgin. With this set of prayers, the reader asked the Virgin Mary to intercede on their behalf. The Adoration of the Magi opens sext, the sixth hour of the day, or noon. The Coronation of the Virgin begins compline, which is before retiring for the evening.

Object facts

• Title: Bifolio from a Book of Hours: Adoration of the Magi (recto); Text (verso)
• Date: c. 1415
• Creator attribution: Boucicaut Master (French, Paris, active about 1410–25)
• Culture: France, Paris
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Folio: 16.8 x 12.7 cm (6 5/8 x 5 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1955.79.1

A detail from the museum

All books of hours contain the same basic sections and were highly customizable.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Allen Memorial Art Museum. An Exhibition of Netherlandish Book Illumination, April 22 Thorugh May 12. 1960.
• Gothic Art 1360-1440. (1963). The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 50(7).
• Meiss, Millard, Kathleen Morand, and Edith W. Kirsch. French Painting in the Time of Jean De Berry: The Boucicaut Master. 1968.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.