Lehigh Codex 17 Book of Hours, Use of Rome

Description This Book of Hours for the Use of Rome was most likley produced in Tours in the decades around the year 1500. It contains a calendar with numerous Tours saints (fols. 1r-6v), followed by the Gospel Lessons, Obsecro te, and O intemerata (fols. 7r-17r). The central section is composed of the Hours of the Virgin for the Use of Rome (fols. 19r-86v), with the Hours of the Cross and Hours of the Holy Spirit intercalated (these begin on fols. 42r and 43v respectively). The four folios that contain readings for Prime, with an introductory miniature of the Nativity, have been misbound at the end of the Hours (fols. 83r-86v). The following sections consist of the Penitential Psalms, Litany, and Prayers (fols. 87r-103r) and the Office of the Dead followed immediately by the Suffrages (fols. 103v-14v). The Suffrages consist of prayers to the Trinity, and to Saints John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Peter and Paul, James, Stephen, Lawrence, Christopher, Sebastian, Anne, and Mary Magdalene. The final four folios are ruled but blank. The miniatures are of a type derived from Jean Bourdichon but with a drier, more angular style typical of his imitators. They include a large miniature of John the Evangelist (fol. 7r), followed by five smaller vignettes for the remaining Evangelists and the two Marian prayers (fols. 8v, 10r, 11r, 12r, and 15r); miniatures for the eight hours of the Virgin and the intercalated Hours of the Cross and Hours of the Holy Spirit (found between fols. 19r and 86v); a miniature of David and Goliath for the Penitential Psalms (fol. 87r), and a Burial Scene for the Office of the Dead (fol. 103v). A sixteenth-century ownership inscription on the verso of the manuscript's penultimate flyleaf mentions an early female owner, Marguerite Duprès.