Leaf from a Book of Hours: Adoration of the Magi (recto) and Text with Illustrated Border (verso) (3 of 3 Excised Leaves) (c. 1510): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Book of Hours: Adoration of the Magi (recto) and Text with Illustrated Border (verso) (3 of 3 Excised Leaves) (c. 1510) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Architectural frames, as in this miniature, became popular with the reception of Renaissance motifs north of the Alps. Winged putti, urns, garlands, masks, and scallop shells surround the main scene. These elements could be assembled in different ways so no two margins were identical. The figures themselves are still Gothic in style, with stiff folds in their clothes’ drapery. Rouen in the late 1400s and early 1500s was an established and important center of book production. Richly decorated literary texts and books of hours, such as the one which held this leaf, were made for sale next to the cathedral.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Book of Hours: Adoration of the Magi (recto) and Text with Illustrated Border (verso) (3 of 3 Excised Leaves)
• Date: c. 1510
• Culture: France, Rouen
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and liquid gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Leaf: 19.5 x 13 cm (7 11/16 x 5 1/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2011.66

A detail from the museum

Part of a book of hours, this miniature opens the prayers to be recited at sext, or the sixth hour of the day.

Collection credit

The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sotheby's (Firm). Highly Important Illuminated Manuscripts. 1981.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999.

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.