Leaf from a Book of Hours: Office of the Dead: Angel Chasing a Devil (recto) and Two Devils (verso) (c. 1460): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Book of Hours: Office of the Dead: Angel Chasing a Devil (recto) and Two Devils (verso) (c. 1460) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Coëtivy Master (French).

The work and its context

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

The elaborate floral and foliated borders of this leaf, decorating the top, bottom, and sides of both recto and verso, contain four separate elements: blue and gold acanthus leaves, gold-leaf ivy vines, sprays of flowers or fruit, and a grotesque. Here the margin prominently includes an illuminated roundel with an angel chasing a devil with a lance. As a time-saving device, illuminators in the 1450s and later would often paint identical borders on both sides of a leaf. The motifs would be drawn on one side and then traced on the other by holding the leaf against a window. The manuscript from which this leaf came is no longer intact. It included numerous painted roundels relating to the lives of Saint Catherine of Alexandria and the more obscure Saint Alexis. It is possible that the manuscript originally belonged to a married couple for whom these saints served as patrons.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Book of Hours: Office of the Dead: Angel Chasing a Devil (recto) and Two Devils (verso)
• Date: c. 1460
• Creator attribution: Coëtivy Master (French)
• Culture: France, Paris
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Leaf: 19.7 x 14.3 cm (7 3/4 x 5 5/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2005.206

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.
• Bloomsbury Auctions (Firm). Western Manuscripts and Miniatures: Wednesday July 6, 2022 (2022).

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.