Cleveland Museum of Art

Leaf from a Book of Hours: Sts. Geneviève, Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret (recto) and Text (verso)

Boucicaut Master

Date: c. 1415
Medium: ink, tempera, silver, and gold on vellum
Culture: France, Paris
Department: Medieval Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art

This leaf’s illumination includes Saints Geneviève, Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret, all early church saints, virgins, and martyrs. During the 1400s and 1500s, the popularity of female saints increased, as did the literacy rate among women, thanks to books of hours. Saint Genevieve is shown with a candle the devil is trying to extinguish while an angel relights it. Saint Catherine, in the center, holds a palm branch and a sword, with which she was executed. Saint Margaret stands on the dragon from whom she emerged clean and unharmed when the cross she carried irritated the dragon’s innards. A typical book of hours contains around a dozen suffrages or individualized prayers to specific saints.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.

Related across collections

Semantically similar works from Cleveland Museum of Art and other institutions.

Leaf from a Book of Hours: Sts. Geneviève, Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret (recto)

Cleveland Museum of Art

Leaf from a Book of Hours: Text (verso)

Cleveland Museum of Art

Leaf from a Book of Hours: Initial D: Massacre of the Innocents (1 of 2 Excised Leaves)

Cleveland Museum of Art

Leaf from a Book of Hours: The Visitation

Cleveland Museum of Art

Single Leaf from a Book of Hours: Pieta

Cleveland Museum of Art

Leaf from a Book of Hours: St. Barbara (2 of 2 Excised Leaves)

Cleveland Museum of Art

Leaf from a Book of Hours: Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man (Prefatory Miniature to the Office of the Virgin) (recto) and Text with Illustrated Border (verso) (1 of 3 Excised Leaves)

Cleveland Museum of Art