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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 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.

This beautiful illuminated leaf contains the incipit of the “Ave sanctissima Mater” prayer, a short but direct personal appeal for the Virgin Mary’s intercession. The prayer is found from the 1470s onward and was often attributed to Pope Sixtus IV (r. 1471–84), in an accompanying rubric granting an indulgence of 11,000 years for its recitation. The striking miniature on this page shows a kneeling male devotee, looking up at the Virgin and Child. This iconography known as the Virgin of Loreto was developed to illustrate the story of the miraculous translation of the Virgin’s house from the Holy Land to Italy. The elaborate shell gold frame, the unfurled text banderole, and the style of the miniature itself all point to the work of the Master of François de Rohan (act. ca. 1525–ca. 1546) and Étienne Colaud (act. ca. 1512–ca. 1541), leading illuminators active in Paris in the 1520s and 1530s.

This Prayer Book epitomizes a customized product commissioned to suit the user’s devotional needs. The first four texts contain six-line, abridged versions of the prayers found in the Hours of the Virgin, a kind of memory aid to the longer Offices. The four radiant but childlike miniatures reflect the soft style championed by Leonardo da Vinci’s followers, Marco d’Oggiono and Bernardino Luini. The most innovative aspect of the book is found in the illusionistically painted sprigs of violas, carnations, and other flowers surrounding the four miniatures, painted so as to appear threaded through cuts in the parchment. This clever visual device is much more closely associated with Netherlandish manuscript illumination, particularly work from the so-called Ghent-Bruges school. The Litany includes saints more typical of France, including Denis, Eustache, and Lubin, which might indicate that the book was produced in Milan during the period of French domination, from 1500 to 1512.