(active early 16th century)

Folios from the Mayer van den Bergh Breviary 1510-15 Parchment and vellum Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp

This breviary bears the collector's name. Breviaries are comprehensive prayerbooks intended for everyday use. Their content was prescribed by the Church. Each one had a calendar setting out the proper prayer for each day and hour. It also contained a perpetual calendar and tables used to calculate movable feasts.

This breviary is sumptuous in the extreme. It has 706 leaves of gossamer-fine vellum with countless painted miniatures or illuminations. It was written in Latin, presumably for a prominent or well-educated person. It also contains a number of pages written in Portuguese explaining how to use the tables of the perpetual calendar. It is possible, therefore, that it was commissioned or altered for a Portuguese sovereign.

This precious book was more of a luxurious status symbol than a real prayerbook. It seems hardly, if ever, to have been used. Consequently, the miniatures have been preserved in exceptionally fine condition. Paradoxically, the excellent condition of the book means that it cannot be put on display, as every exposure to light causes this exceptional treasure to deteriorate slightly.

The many painted miniatures were produced by a workshop active in the late 15th and early 16th century in Bruges or Ghent. The breviary has been attributed to two of the most important artists of the 'Ghent-Bruges school', Simon Bening and Gerard Horenbout. One or two of the exceptional miniatures were probably the work of the Bruges painter Jan Provoost, by whom no other manuscript illuminations are known.

All the features that earned the workshop its success and fame are present in the breviary's miniatures. They include the margin decoration, painted in tromp-l'oeil, often with a strewn flower motif. This new brilliantly detailed observation of nature and representation of the human figure anticipates the Renaissance approach. The calendar miniatures, each of which shows the month's rural labours, are the most representative of their type and are by far the best known of the more than two hundred illuminations in the breviary.

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Author: MINIATURIST, Flemish Title: Folios from the Mayer van den Bergh Breviary Time-line: 1501-1550 School: Flemish Form: illumination