Evidence for the patron’s northern connections
Owners
The manuscript contains textual and visual features not found in contemporary French manuscripts. These features include the addition of readings for feasts of the Virgin with elaborate historiated initials; the insertion of the suffrages and images of saints at Lauds, the second office in the Hours of the Virgin; and the illustration of the Hours of the Virgin with scenes from Christ’s Passion instead of the Nativity cycle common in France. These features, typical of Books of Hours made in Brabant, Hainaut and the diocese of Liège, suggest that the patron had connections with regions north of Paris.
Baptism of Christ (suffrage to St John the Baptist)
The historiated initial exemplifies the monumental and yet elegant figures painted by Hand C. The diapered blue and pink backgrounds, used in addition to the highly burnished gold leaf, are a new motif that would become more widely used in Parisian illumination during the 1270s.