Fitzwilliam Book of Hours Facsimile Edition

Created around 1510 in Bruges, the Fitzwilliam Book of Hours is an expertly and extensively illuminated Christian prayer book. It is the product of the collaboration among four of the most talented Flemish illuminators of the time: the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book, the Master of James IV of Scotland, the Painter of Additional 15677, and the Master of Saint Michael. Virtually every page has a painted border, and the book boasts twenty-seven large and two small miniatures with full borders, many historiated.

The manuscript is a book of hours, a collection of texts designed for private devotions focused on the Hours of the Virgin. The book also includes Marian prayers, the Penitential Psalms, the Office of the Dead, and suffrages (short prayers) to saints, all preceded by a liturgical calendar.

A Two-Generation Collaboration

The lion's share of the illumination is the work of the Painter of Additional 15677. He emulated the painting styles and some of the compositions of two of his collaborators, the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book and the Master of James IV of Scotland, who were a generation older. The Master of Saint Michael is named for his miniature of Saint Michael in this book (fol. 165r), which is distinguished by its subtle coloration.

The Master of the Dresden Prayer Book painted a single miniature and border ensemble in the Fitzwilliam manuscript, which introduces the Passion according to Saint John, a relatively rare inclusion in a book of hours. The master creates a complicated landscape between miniature and border, in which Christ appears four times as the drama of his arrest unfolds (fol. 15r).

The other veteran illuminator, the Master of James IV of Scotland, supplied the miniatures of Saint Luke Painting the Virgin, Saints Peter and Paul, and Saints Philip and James (fols. 36r, 166r, and 168v). The small miniature of Saint Luke recalls the painter's version of the subject in the earlier Isabella Breviary.

Painted Borders of Three Distinct Varieties

The manuscript features borders of three types: historiated (populated by figural scenes, sometimes in a continuous landscape and sometimes in a series of roundels); fictive architectural frames (often painted in gold to simulate the appearance of gilt relief sculpture); and strewn-flower borders, with fictive flowers, vines, and small creatures seeming to cast shadows on painted backgrounds.

The borders of the calendar pages, the work of the Painter of Additional 15677, depict seasonal activities including a sleigh ride, milking a cow, a boating party, and treading grapes (fols. 1-12). The appropriate sign of the zodiac appears in the sky on the first page of each month.

A Fashionable Script

The text is written in long lines (a single column) in French Bâtarde, the formalized version of a cursive script that came to be favored for luxury manuscripts in France and Flanders in the fifteenth century. Miniatures, painted initials, or both mark major textual divisions.

An Overpainted Coat of Arms

The coat of arms of the original or an early owner has been overpainted and remains unidentified. The Scottish art collector John Malcolm (1805-1893) owned the manuscript in the nineteenth century, and Charles William Dyson Perrins (1864-1958) acquired it in 1906. Henry Davis (1897-1977) purchased it in 1958 at one of the Perrins sales and donated it to the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1975. Its binding of red velvet over wooden boards with metal furnishings dates from the nineteenth century.