Known for their stunning displays of artistry and technique, Italian illuminated manuscripts have long been coveted by collectors around the world. The J. Paul Getty Museum holds the most recently formed institutional collection of its kind in the United States, yet it spans more than eight centuries and reflects many of the extraordinary achievements of the Italian tradition. Made up of whole manuscripts as well as leaves and cuttings, the Getty collection of Italian illumination contains nearly sixty works and includes the Montecassino Breviary, the Ferrarese Gualenghi-d’Este Hours, and the Roman gradual illuminated by Antonio da Monza for Santa Maria in Aracoeli. Other important acquisitions are one of the finest Bolognese Bibles of the thirteenth century; three leaves from the Laudario of Sant’Agnese, the most ambitious Florentine manuscript from the first half of the fourteenth century; and a missal once owned by the antipope John XXIII. This beautifully illustrated volume presents many splendid examples of Italian painting and illumination. Some are by noted artists such as Girolamo da Cremona, Pacino di Bonaguida, and Pisanello; others are attributed to artists known only by their works, such as the Master of Gerona, who is credited with one of the finest miniatures in the collection. This carefully crafted book is sure to become an essential resource for scholars, students, and collectors.

How was the Book of Hours created and used as a book and what did it mean to its owners?

Leading French painters in the late medieval period executed miniatures for lavishly illuminated books of hours. In the mid-fifteenth century, Simon de Varie commissioned such a book. Completed in 1455, it included five priceless works by the most eminent French painter of the time, Jean Fouquet, as well as other striking paintings by two of his contemporaries. In the seventeenth century, Simon de Varie's book was divided into three sections and sold as separate volumes. Two of these volumes are today in the Royal Library in The Hague. The third volume--thought lost until 1984, when it surfaced in a private collection and was subsequently acquired by the Getty Museum--contains the first miniatures by Jean Fouquet to have been discovered in eighty years. This beautiful book will reproduce in color all of the miniatures and historiated initials in the original manuscript, along with selected text pages with secondary decoration. Comparative illustrations also accompany the two essays in the volume. Marrow's text addresses the role of books of hours in late medieval culture; the contents and form of de Varie's Hours; and the relationship of the miniatures by Fouquet to the rest of the artist's oeuvre. In a related essay, Francois Avril discusses the position of Simon de Varie and his family in mid-fifteenth-century France. The publication of The Hours of Simon de Varie adds to the Getty's impressive list of publications on illuminated manuscripts begun in 1990 and including the widely acclaimed facsimile Mira calligraphiae monumenta.

French Illuminated Manuscripts in the J. Paul Getty Museum introduces the public to the richness of the J. Paul Getty Museum's holdings in French manuscripts from the ninth to the eighteenth century. This volume includes full-color reproductions of masterpieces from such works as a bible from ninth-century Tours; a sacramentary attributed to Nivardus of Milan from the first quarter of the eleventh century; the Shah Abbas Bible, made in northern France about 1250; a book of hours made in the atelier of the Bedford Master in Paris about 1450; and a book of prayers of the mass, written and illuminated in Paris by Jean Pierre Rousselet about 1720-30. It also includes many multiple illuminations from such manuscripts as a psalter by the Master of the Ingeborg Psalter, made after 1205 and probably in Noyon; the Wenceslaus Psalter from 1250; and the Boucicaut Master's illuminated manuscript of Boccaccio's Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes from about 1415. French Illuminated Manuscripts in the J. Paul Getty Museum introduces the public to the richness of the J. Paul Getty Museum's holdings in French manuscripts from the ninth to the eighteenth century. This volume includes full-color reproductions of masterpieces from such works as a bible from ninth-century Tours; a sacramentary attributed to Nivardus of Milan from the first quarter of the eleventh century; the Shah Abbas Bible, made in northern France about 1250; a book of hours made in the atelier of the Bedford Master in Paris about 1450; and a book of prayers of the mass, written and illuminated in Paris by Jean Pierre Rousselet about 1720-30. It also includes many multiple illuminations from such manuscripts as a psalter by the Master of the Ingeborg Psalter, made after 1205 and probably in Noyon; the Wenceslaus Psalter from 1250; and the Boucicaut Master's illuminated manuscript of Boccaccio's Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes from about 1415.

"The core of this book on the French verse Alexander in France and Italy was written by eminent Alexander specialist David J.A. Ross, who left an incomplete typescript at his death. In its emphasis on illustration, this book offers new perspectives on the reception of one of the most popular medieval heroes. Ross's analysis of the illustrations proves that despite some convergent patterns there is no iconographic programme that coordinates the three major verse traditions as there is for the versions in prose. Nevertheless, the verse versions continued to be copied and illustrated long after the emergence of prose. The editors have expanded Ross's text, as he wished, to include a comparative analysis of the iconography and they have situated each manuscript as far as possible in its cultural context, demonstrating that the producers of the verse Alexander were also responsible for writing and illustrating a large number of other vernacular and liturgical books in Northern France, Paris, the South, and Italy. This volume is a sequel to Ross's Studies in the Alexander Romance and his Illustrated medieval Alexander-books in Germany and the Netherlands, and makes available an extensive corpus of high-quality images of this great hero."--