Walters Book of Hours W.173 Facsimile Edition

The book of hours in the Walters Art Museum bearing the shelfmark W.173 is an illuminated Christian prayer book made for a woman. Created around 1440-1450 in Bruges, it boasts seventeen large miniatures and eight historiated initials painted by the Gold Scrolls Group. The full-page miniatures include portraits of the four authors of the Gospel accounts of the life of Christ, Saint Nicholas, and Saint Francis of Assisi. The pages with miniatures and large painted initials all have painted border decoration of spiraling vines, and the whole book sparkles with gold and jewel-like color.

The manuscript is a book of hours, a collection of mostly Latin texts designed for private devotions focusing on the Hours of the Virgin. The book also includes the Hours of the Cross, the Hours of the Holy Spirit, the Penitential Psalms, and other prayers, ending with one in French, and all preceded by a liturgical calendar in French.

The Gold Scrolls of the Gold Scrolls Group

The prolific painters active first in Paris and then in Bruges called the Gold Scrolls Group (or the Masters of the Gold Scrolls) owe their nickname to their frequent use of backgrounds of flat color ornamented with delicate scrolling vines of gold. When these occur in the Walters manuscript, the background color is always red (fols. 9v, 11v, 13v, 15v, 43r, 47r, 55r, and 77v).

Gold is further employed here to create haloes for the painted holy figures. These are sometimes discs of gold leaf (as in the Descent of the Holy Spirit; fol. 21v), but there are also haloes composed of thin rays of gold extending out from the figure's head, and these are sometimes enormous, as in the full-page Crucifixion (fols. 15v).

Parallel Stories Unfold

The eight prayer services of the Hours of the Virgin are introduced by three-quarter-page miniatures of scenes from the Passion of Christ, extending from the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane to the Entombment, and historiated initials of scenes from Christ's infancy, starting with the Annunciation to the Virgin and ending with the Flight into Egypt.

Beasts in the Borders

Each of the thirty-two full borders features a single creature in the outer margin, and no two are alike. They include hybrids with a clear distinction between the upper and lower body in color or form, but they almost all defy description. There is, for example, a quasi-dolphin-horse reading a book (fol. 14r).

Focus on Franciscan Saints

The woman for whom the manuscript was created must have had a special devotion to Franciscan saints. There is a suffrage (a formulaic short prayer) to Saint Francis (1182-1226) with a full-page portrait (fol. 73v), and the calendar and the litany feature Franciscan saints.

Some Miniatures Lost

The manuscript lost six full-page miniatures at some point in its history. The nine surviving full-page miniatures are all painted on separate pieces of parchment with no text on the back, which are glued (not sewn) into the book. It is not surprising that others either were extracted as collectibles or fell out.

The first identified owner of the book is Jean-Baptiste Verdussen (1698-1773). Alfred Werlé (1837-1907) subsequently owned the codex, which Henry Walters (1848-1931) purchased sometime in or after 1908. Walters bequeathed it to the Walters Art Gallery (now Walters Art Museum).