MINIATURIST, Netherlandish
(active 1430s in Utrecht)

Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves

1434-40
Manuscript (M. 917 and 945), 192 x 130 mm
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York

This folio depicting St Ambrose is from the Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves. The book was executed by a miniaturist who was probably active in Utrecht. A number of his miniatures are derived from paintings by the Master of Flémalle (Robert Campin), but in many of the illustrations of the prayers to the saints, the surprising realistic drolleries in the margins, where genre motifs with no apparent relationship to the main miniature are found, anticipate the unusual marginal illustrations developed in the Ghent-Bruges school of book illumination some fifty years later. Mussels, clams, birdcages, feathers, and other such mundane objects are strewn about the margins.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.