Getty Museum

Two Leaves from the Munich-Montserrat Hours

Date

about 1535–1540

Medium

Tempera colors, gold paint, and ink

Culture

Flemish

Department

Manuscripts

Institution

Getty Museum

These two leaves come from a magnificent book of hours that was taken apart long ago. The book's remains can now be found at three different institutions. A number of the manuscript's miniatures can be found in a public collection in Munich, while a portion containing most of the text of the manuscript along with some illuminated borders is housed at the monastic library of Montserrat, Spain. The two miniatures in the Getty's collection depict Saints Sebastian and Gregory and would have originally been found in the suffrages section of the manuscript. Although the artist of the book, Simon Bening, was painting on a small scale, he imbued the miniatures with all the complexity of contemporary northern Renaissance painting on panel, even providing fictive frames for his images. The scenes are carefully structured, with the figures seeming to move naturally within illusionistic spaces.

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