Book of Hours (Use of Paris) (c. 1420): Art, History and Details

Book of Hours (Use of Paris) (c. 1420) 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:

The Boucicaut Master takes his name from the book of hours he made for Jean de Boucicaut (died 1421), marshal of France, who was taken prisoner by the English at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. This talented artist, known for his tall, elongated figures with delicate features, exercised profound influence over Parisian manuscript painting during the first decades of the 1400s—a point illustrated by this volume.

Object facts

• Title: Book of Hours (Use of Paris)
• Date: c. 1420
• Creator attribution: Boucicaut Master (French, Paris, active about 1410–25)
• Culture: France, Paris
• Type: Bound Volume
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Sheet: 20.3 x 14 cm (8 x 5 1/2 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1942.169

A detail from the museum

The owner of a book of hours was intended to stop eight times a day and read a devotional text.

Collection credit

Bequest of Julia Morgan Marlatt

Further reading listed by the museum

• “Gothic Art 1360-1440: Catalog.” The Cleveland Museum of Art Bulletin (Sept. 1963)
• Meiss, Millard. French Painting in the Time of Jean De Berry: The Late Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke. 1967.
• Delaisse, L.M.J. “An Exhibition of Netherlandish Book Illumination.” AllenMemorial Art Museum Bulletin XVII (Summer 1960)

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.