Book Of Hours: Illuminations by Simon Marmion
with introduction and commentaries by James Thorpe

Table of Contents
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From the Introduction

This little book offers a rich feast for the eyes. It presents, in color facsimile, the seventeen miniature paintings in a magnificent fifteenth-century Book of Hours in the notable collection of the Huntington Library.

These paintings are generally attributed to Simon Marmion, a master of the art of the miniature, one of the highest forms of artistic achievement of the Middle Ages. They are of outstanding beauty, and even reproductions of them convey their rich appeal. This introduction and the short commentary on the page facing each plate are intended to help bridge the five centuries that separate these paintings from us. The reward is, ideally, to be able to look at the pictures with a freshened understanding.

In the late Middle Ages, wealthy people sometimes commissioned the preparation of a handwritten book to be used in private devotions. Such a book included psalms, other passages from the Bible, anthems, hymns, and prayers, and it usually had colorful decorations and pictures to give visual beauty. These devotional manuals were for laymen, and they came to be called Books of Hours because they generally included, as a central section, the material to be read in observing the "Hours" of the Virgin Mary.

48 pages, 6 x 9, 17 color illus, cloth, 0-87328-211-6, $14.95