Leaf from a Book of Hours: Decorated Initial D[eus] with Foliated Border (Opening of Terce: Hours of the Holy Spirit) (1430s): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Book of Hours: Decorated Initial D[eus] with Foliated Border (Opening of Terce: Hours of the Holy Spirit) (1430s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Master of Guillebert de Mets (Flemish); Workshop.

The work and its context

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

The Master of Guillebert de Mets (probably Jean de Pestivien) is named after the scribe who recorded his name in an illuminated copy of the Decameron (a collection of stories by Giovanni Boccaccio, written 1351–53) made for Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, and for which the artist contributed several miniatures. The Master of Guillebert de Mets was active from about 1410 to 1445. So far there is no proof that allows us to follow his career or to know precisely where he worked. Some evidence, however, hints that he was of Flemish origin. The artist painted in an easily recognizable style. His figures have prominent heads with clearly delineated eyes and small mouths, slender torsos with thin, spindly legs, and long, finely worked fingers. Many of his miniatures, such as the Crucifixion and Last Judgment here, show that he often favored mosaic backgrounds of delicately worked checkered patterns.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Book of Hours: Decorated Initial D[eus] with Foliated Border (Opening of Terce: Hours of the Holy Spirit)
• Date: 1430s
• Creator attribution: Master of Guillebert de Mets (Flemish); Workshop
• Culture: Flanders, Ghent?, 15th century
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Each leaf: 12.7 x 8.4 cm (5 x 3 5/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2005.205

Collection credit

The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.