DAVID, Gerard
(b. ca. 1460, Oudewater, d. 1523, Bruges)

Breviary of Isabella of Castile

1490s
Manuscript (Additional Ms. 18851), 230 x 160 mm
British Library, London

Gerard David and his workshop are credited with producing lavish illuminated manuscripts, including the Breviary of Isabella of Castile. Francisco de Rojas, the Spanish ambassador to the Netherlands, may have presented the breviary to the queen in 1497. One of its miniature, The Adoration of the Magi, closely resembles a panel painting attributed to David. Regardless of whether the breviary's miniatures were produced by his hand, David's painting techniques were imitated by Bruges illuminators throughout the last decade of the fifteenth century and well into the sixteenth.