A Dutch Book of Hours in the John Rylands Library (Dutch MS 16)

Abstract

This paper analyses an unpublished Dutch-language Book of Hours in the John Rylands Library, focusing on unusual core texts the manuscript contains and distinctive features of its cycle of illumination. The miniatures and the richly painted decoration of the manuscript can be attributed to the Master of the Haarlem Bible and dated c.1450–75. The inserted full-page miniatures include iconographically noteworthy examples, and the placement of some in the volume is anomalous, suggesting that they may not have been planned when the volume was written. Our analyses of distinctive texts and images of the manuscript lead us to offer suggestions about the religious status or affiliations of its patron and to propose possible monastic settings in which it might have been used. We discuss the disparate character of its textual and illustrative components in relation to current reappraisals of the organisation of manuscript production in the Northern Netherlands.