Leaf from a Book of Hours: The Visitation (c. 1415): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Book of Hours: The Visitation (c. 1415) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Boucicaut Master (French, Paris, active about 1410–25).

The work and its context

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

The heart of every book of hours is the Hours of the Virgin. With this set of prayers, the reader asked the Virgin Mary to intercede on their behalf. The prayers come mostly from the Bible and include psalms, hymns, and readings. The Hours of the Virgin emerged from the eight “hours” of the day in the monastic world’s routine of daily prayers from daybreak to late at night. Originally used solely by the ordained, by the 1000s, these prayers had spread to the general population through their inclusion in books of hours. This section is traditionally illustrated by images from the life of the Virgin Mary, with each hour featuring a different event. The scene of the Visitation opens lauds, the prayers said at night or upon rising.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Book of Hours: The Visitation
• Date: c. 1415
• Creator attribution: Boucicaut Master (French, Paris, active about 1410–25)
• Culture: France, Paris
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Sheet: 17 x 12.7 cm (6 11/16 x 5 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1953.366.1

A detail from the museum

Highly customizable, the order of a book of hours shifts, and individual prayers vary, sometimes significantly, from region to region.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Allen Memorial Art Museum. An Exhibition of Netherlandish Book Illumination, April 22 Thorugh May 12. 1960.
• Gothic Art 1360-1440. (1963). The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 50(7).
• Meiss, Millard, Kathleen Morand, and Edith W. Kirsch. French Painting in the Time of Jean De Berry: The Boucicaut Master. 1968.

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.