Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain: Fol. 102v (c. 1500): Art, History and Details

Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain: Fol. 102v (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:

This manuscript was illuminated by a circle of at least five highly organized manuscript painters active in the Flemish cities of Ghent and Bruges. The principal illuminator was Alexander Bening, who painted the majority of the book's miniatures. Manuscripts produced by this circle of artists are renowned for the decoration of their borders, which typically feature a rich variety of realistically-painted flowers, birds, and butterflies. This prayer book, called a book of hours, was intended not for a cleric, but for the private devotions of a lay person-in this case, Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain (1451-1504). Isabella's coat of arms embellishes the book's frontispiece. It is unlikely that the book was commissioned by the Queen herself; rather, she probably received it as a diplomatic gift from someone courting her patronage, perhaps Cardinal Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros. A Franciscan friar, Jimenez was dependent upon Isabella for his advancement, first to the post of Queen's confessor in 1492, and then to Archbishop of Toledo in 1495.

Object facts

• Title: Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain: Fol. 102v
• Date: c. 1500
• Creator attribution: Master of the First Prayerbook of Maximillian (Flemish, c. 1444–1519); Associates
• Culture: Flanders, Ghent and Bruges, late 15th century
• Type: Bound Volume
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Codex: 22.5 x 15.2 cm (8 7/8 x 6 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1963.256.102.b

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

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.