Printed Book of Hours (Use of Rome): fol. 66v, Text (1510): Art, History and Details

Printed Book of Hours (Use of Rome): fol. 66v, Text (1510) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Guillaume Le Rouge (French, Paris, active 1493–1517); Master of the Très Petites Heures of Anne of Brittany (French, Paris, active c.1480–1510).

The work and its context

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

Illustrated prayer books called books of hours remained popular with Europe’s elite well into the era of printing technology. This example belongs to a printed edition of five by the Parisian printer and engraver Guillaume Le Rouge, dating to 1510. Though printed on vellum (not paper), its 62 engraved pictures were hand-colored by an illuminator much like a traditional manuscript. By the mid-1480s, Paris was the center of production for books of hours with printed texts and engraved ornament. This book is therefore a hybrid fusing two distinct production methods—illumination and printing—representing the waning phase of the illuminator’s art prior to the complete transformation to printed books.

Object facts

• Title: Printed Book of Hours (Use of Rome): fol. 66v, Text
• Date: 1510
• Creator attribution: Guillaume Le Rouge (French, Paris, active 1493–1517); Master of the Très Petites Heures of Anne of Brittany (French, Paris, active c.1480–1510)
• Culture: France, Paris
• Type: Bound Volume
• Technique: 112 printed folios on parchment, bound
• Dimensions: Overall: 16.7 x 10.5 x 3 cm (6 9/16 x 4 1/8 x 1 3/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2009.276.66.b

A detail from the museum

The workshop of Guillaume le Rouge was in the Neuve Notre-Dame near Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Brunet, Jacques-Charles. Notice sur les Heures gothiques imprimées à Paris: à la fin du quinzième siècle et dans une partie du seizième, par J.-C. Brunet. VI Paris: Impr. Firmin Didot frères, 1864.
• MONCEAUX, Henri. Les Le Rouge De Chablis II 1470-1531. [A List of Works Published by Members of the Family with Short Biographical Notices.]. 1895.
• Lacombe, Paul. Livres d'heures imprimés su XVe et au XVe siècle conservés dans les bibliothèque publiques de Paris: catalogue. Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1963.

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.