Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain (c. 1500): Art, History and Details

Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain (c. 1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Master of the First Prayerbook of Maximillian (Flemish, c. 1444–1519); Associates.

The work and its context

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

The original owner of this exquisite book of hours was Queen Isabella of Spain, who sponsored Christopher Columbus's exploratory voyage to the Americas. Eventually this book found its way to the New World and was acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1963.

Object facts

• Title: Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain
• Date: c. 1500
• Creator attribution: Master of the First Prayerbook of Maximillian (Flemish, c. 1444–1519); Associates
• Culture: Flanders, Bruges and Ghent
• Type: Bound Volume
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Codex: 23.5 x 17.3 x 4.8 cm (9 1/4 x 6 13/16 x 1 7/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1963.256

A detail from the museum

Isabella’s book of hours may have in its margins one of the first depictions of a daffodil in manuscript painting.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Gras, Samuel, and Anne-Marie Legaré. Lumières du Nord: les manuscrits enluminés français et flamands de la Bibliothèque nationale d'Espagne. Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France : Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2021.
• Lee, Sherman E. "Year in Review for 1963." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 50, no. 10 (1963): 263-94.
• Wixom, William D. "Twelve Masterpieces of Medieval and Renaissance Book Illumination. A Catalogue to the Exhibition: March 17-May 17, 1964." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 51, no. 3 (1964)

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.