Leaf from a Book of Hours: St. Bartholomew (c. 1440–1460): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Book of Hours: St. Bartholomew (c. 1440–1460) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Little is known of the life or acts of Saint Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles. The Golden Legend records the tradition that Bartholomew preached in India and Armenia after Christ’s resurrection. It was in Armenia that the saint was martyred by being flayed alive. His attribute in art, as shown here, is typically a knife, the instrument of his death. The saint is shown standing within an architectural interior with a paneled ceiling, leaded windows, tiled floor, and a hanging cloth embellished with stars. The artist has not yet been identified, though his slightly expressionistic style and jagged, irregular drapery folds, as well as the border decoration, are typical of Flemish manuscript painting around the mid-1400s.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Book of Hours: St. Bartholomew
• Date: c. 1440–1460
• Culture: Flanders, Bruges (?), 15th century
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Each leaf: 12.5 x 8.5 cm (4 15/16 x 3 3/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2006.11

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.