note (text)
Heures à l'usage de ThérouanneThis Book of Hours was produced in Northern France in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The calendar contains numerous saints venerated in the region of Thérouanne (See Origin details), and the Hours of the Virgin is of the Use of Thérouanne. The book is embellished with ten full-page miniatures surrounded by illusionistic panel borders, twelve foliate borders, and twenty smaller miniatures with single-side panel borders accompanying the Gospel Lessons, a prayer for the buried, and the Suffrages. Several pages with miniatures have been removed (see Foliation/Pagination). The miniatures and illusionistic borders are in a regional Northern French style derived from the so-called Bruges-Ghent school of illumination, while the majority of the foliate borders introducing the texts are in a more traditional French style. Several of the miniatures, border details, and inscriptions are derived from images in printed Books of Hours designed by the Master of the Très Petites Heures of Anne of Brittany. The original owner of the book has not been precisely identified, though he is depicted in prayer before an image of the Trinity on fol. 128v, and his unidentified coat-of-arms is reproduced reproduced three times (1 and 4, argent a lion sable armed and langued gules; 2 and 3, or an anchored and belted cross gules party per pale argent three fleurs-de-lys sable; fols. 29r, 51r, and 128v). A motto, "Il n'est que d'estre," is also present on fols. 40r, 51r, and 128v. The calendar and rubrics are in French. The book was in the possession of the Philadelphia collector William Hamilton as early as 1768.
