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This Book of Hours is unusual in several ways. Its text is written in gold leaf and lapis lazuli only. Chrysography, or writing in gold, is extremely rare and marked of the superlative status of the patron. The text was completed around 1425, either in France or by a French-trained scribe. The book’s sixteen miniatures date from the end of the fifteenth century and are by two distinct artists that were trained north and south of the Alps. Cristoforo Majorana (act. ca. 1472–94), an illuminator for the Aragonese court in Naples, painted twelve of the miniatures. The other four miniatures are from the workshop of the Master of the della Rovere Missals (act. ca. 1467–1506?), a prolific painter alternately active in France and Rome from the 1460s to 1506. This manuscript constitutes a hybrid object that speaks of the intense cultural exchanges that took place between Italy and the North.

The Susanna Hours is so-named on account of its unusual cycle of thirteen large miniatures narrating the story of Susanna and the Elders, adapted from chapter 13 of the apocryphal Book of Daniel. Each of the miniatures is accompanied by a set of five rhyming AABBA verses in French, consisting of unique paraphrased translations of the biblical text. The basic compositions of these images derive from metalcut border illustrations designed by the Master of the Très Petites Heures of Anne of Brittany for the Parisian printers Simon Vostre and Philippe Pigouchet around 1497. The section dedicated to suffrages are mostly dedicated to female saints. The style of the illuminations is close to that of the so-called Master of Petrarch’s Triumphs (act. ca. 1499–ca. 1514) and suggests that the book was produced in Paris between about 1505 and 1520.

This little-known Book of Hours features inventive, elaborate miniatures, which are typical of work made in Lyon in the second decade of the sixteenth century. Each large miniature is surrounded by a distinct, two-level all’antica architectural frame that adapts the vocabulary of Veneto-Paduan illumination to the traditional layout of French-made Books of Hours. This book contains thirteen large miniatures in addition to twenty smaller inset miniatures and twenty-four calendar vignettes of the Zodiac and labors of the months. The artist responsible for these miniatures is identifiable as the Master of the Entry of Francis I (fl. ca. 1493–1517), the anonymous illuminator so named after a manuscript containing fascinating illustrations of temporary “tableaux vivants” set up by the citizens of Lyon throughout the city to greet the French King in July 1515. The artist was active in the city of Lyon from about 1485 to 1515.

This Book of Hours is finely written in a humanist hand and features a format popular in central and Northern Italy earlier in the fifteenth century. The calendar contains saints venerated in Northern Italy, including Ambrose of Milan (7 December), Secundus of Asti (1 June), and Prosdocimus of Padua (7 November). However, the presence of the unusual Dedication of Saint Mark’s Basilica (8 October) firmly locates the origins of the book in Venice. The mention of both Saint Mark and Saint Louis in the Litany portion is possibly due to the French presence in Italy at the turn of the sixteenth century. Further evidence of the book’s geographic origin, and the increasing prevalence of vernacular prayer in the fifteenth century, is the detailed sets of instructions in the Venetian dialect for weekday morning prayers.

This minuscule Italian Book of Hours is illustrated with sixteen rectangular miniatures painted in a rough but vivacious style. The unusual iconographic program demonstrates how even relatively modest commissions could be customized for innovative devotional needs. Here, the sequence of images is imagined as a chronological narrative spanning the whole book, beginning with the Birth of the Virgin. Saint Reparata appears in the calendar and is repeated along with Saint Zenobius in the Litany, indicating that this Book of Hours was made for use in Florence. The naive yet forceful style of the miniatures has much in common with the work of Bartolomeo d’Antonio Varnucci (ca. 1410–79).

This precious Book of Hours contains three miniatures painted by the young Liberale di Jacopo, better known by his toponymic, Liberale da Verona (1445–1527/9). Liberale was among the most accomplished painter-illuminators active in Italy in the second half of the fifteenth century. His signal works are the fantastically decorated initials of the choir books of Siena Cathedral, undertaken at the beginning of his career in conjunction with Girolamo da Cremona. The miniatures depicted in this book were produced at the end of the artist’s Sienese period, in the second half of 1475. The book’s later owner, whose name is inscribed on the inside front cover, was sister Artemia Maria Giovanna, daughter of Raffaello di Biagio Piccolomini, baptized 9 September 1525. It is conceivable that Artemia could have inherited the book from her relative, Guid’Antonio di Biagio Piccolomini, who served as ambassador to Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini) in 1462.

This Book of Hours reveals much concerning its first owner. The style of the manuscript’s decoration suggests that it was produced in Burgundy, likely Dijon, where in the early sixteenth century a rather scruffy, busy painterly style predominated. The presence of an almanac for twenty years beginning in 1518 confirms a date of production on or shortly before that year. The full-page miniature showing the martyrdom of Saint John is based on Albrecht Dürer’s Apocalypse woodcut print from 1511. This manuscript features the arms of Étienne Thirion, depicted no less than three times. Thirion used his Book of Hours regularly, for its folios contain numerous superimposed imprints of sixteenth-century eyeglasses. These faint but unmistakable circular impressions all occur within the final gathering, which contains prayers to be recited at specific points during the Mass.

A heraldic escutcheon bearing two coats of arms impaled (indicating a matrimonial union) is present on the first page of the Hours of the Virgin of this Milanese Book of Hours. The right side features a serpent devouring a human baby, the famous vipera or Biscione, employed by the Visconti rulers of Milan and incorporated into the arms of their successors, the Sforza. The left side of the arms is of the De Raude or da Rhò, with the cartwheel being a play on the Latin word “rota” or wheel. It belonged to Cornelia Rhò who married Giovanni II in 1518. Their 1518 wedding accords perfectly with the book’s c. 1520 date on account of the style of its miniatures and inhabited initials, which show the ongoing impact of the art of Leonardo da Vinci and his followers on miniature painting in Lombardy. This Book of Hours was likely a wedding gift to the young bride.

While the layout of this book is more reminiscent of a Missal or a Breviary, it nonetheless contains all of the sections habitually found in a Book of Hours, including a calendar with numerous Milanese and Franciscan Saints and fifteen prayers of Saint Bridget. The underlying design of the all’antica border design, with its carefully shaded pearls, grotesque faces, and golden acanthus leaves, points to the ambit of Giovanni Pietro Birago (act. 1471–1513), an illuminator with close links to the Sforza court. The coat of arms in the lower margin depicted here belonged to Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519), the famous illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattanei. The arms, quartered with those of her husband Alfonso d’Este (1476–1534), must date from between their marriage in February 1502 and his elevation to the dukedom in June 1505.

Written in French and dated to 30 December 1524, this document consists of a brevet, or commission, granted to the viscount of Turenne, Antoine de La Tour d’Auvergne, seigneur d’Oliergues (1474–1527), bestowing the rank of captain and the charge of twenty-five lances and fifty men-at-arms. It is signed by the French king, Francis I, in his distinctive scrawl: “françoys.” Politically, the document attests to Francis’s preparations for a new attack on Milan as part of the Italian war of 1521–26. Ultimately, this military campaign would end disastrously for the King, concluding abruptly with the decisive French defeat at the Battle of Pavia in February 1525, where the King was captured and held hostage for several years. Through this document, we become party to a strategic decision, personally approved by the king and issued less than two months prior to this ill-fated expedition.