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George Braziller in association with The Pierpont Morgan Library, Published 2004. Paperback, 144 pp.; 28 cm; third printing (with updated bibliography; text and illustrations copyright 1997); illustrated with approximately 107 full-color reproductions of medieval and Renaissance manuscript illuminations.
In Very Good condition. Glossy pictorial red paper covers with cream lettering (front cover featuring Yolande of Soissons in Prayer from the Psalter-Hours of Yolande of Soissons, France, ca. 1280-90) have light bumping and creasing to the edges and corners with a tiny bit of lamination peeling at the corner tips, and mild shelf wear. A Getty Museum gift-shop sticker is present on the lower back cover. Binding tight, pages clean and unmarked.First published on the occasion of the 1997-1998 Pierpont Morgan Library exhibition "Medieval Bestseller: The Book of Hours." This third printing was issued on the occasion of the touring exhibition held at the Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth), the Saint Louis Art Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles) between October 2003 and January 2006. Roger S. Wieck is Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library and the author of Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life and Late Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, 1350-1525, in the Houghton Library. Book design by Philip Grushkin; photography by David A. Loggie.[From back cover] This book features some of the finest examples of illuminated pages from medieval and Renaissance Books of Hours. A "bestseller" for three hundred years, the Book of Hours was a devotional work that almost everyone owned and virtually knew by heart. The 107 glorious illuminations presented here are from The Pierpont Morgan Library's collection, one of the world's richest collections of the hand-painted book. Roger Wieck's comprehensive text explores two key elements of Books of Hours: the magnificent illuminations and the texts. Mr. Wieck also introduces these volumes to the general reader, with a discussion of their iconography, the artists who illuminated them, and their role as a religious text in the lives of their owners. As a collection of both stirring words and inspiring images, the Book of Hours thus comprised a series of "painted prayers."Contents: Preface; Introduction; I. Calendar; II. Gospel Lessons; III. Hours of the Virgin; IV. Hours of the Cross and Hours of the Holy Spirit; V. "Obsecro te" and "O intemerata"; VI. Penitential Psalms and Litany; VII. Accessory Texts; VIII. Suffrages; IX. Office of the Dead; Books for Further Reading; Indices (of manuscript and printed Books of Hours; of artists; of publishers and printers; of manuscripts cited; of early owners); Appendices (Incipit outline of major Offices; Manuscript and printed Books of Hours by century and country of origin).