Book of Hours: Rare Book of the Week

This week's Rare Book of the Week is this Book of Hours from the third quarter of the 15th century, Flanders, illustrated by Willem Vrelant with Latin text in brown and red ink, 15 miniatures in border framing, decorative initials, and a green-blue velvet binding with openwork silver clasps, and patterned gilt edges.

It is among the items in the Text & Spirit exhibition at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, which runs until June 22.

For the first time, the Museum Angewandte Kunst is showcasing its complete collection of late medieval illuminated manuscripts in the exhibition. These include books and fragments decorated with illuminations and ornaments in gold, and lapis lazuli. The exhibition sheds light on various parallels between then and now, drawing a comparison between the books of hours and today’s smartphones and the layout of lifestyle magazineswith their calligraphic accentuation of text beginnings, initials, playfullness with the typesetting and the disproportionate relationship between text and image.  

The focus lies on the impact of both as life companions, which are simultaneously means of communication and objects of prestige, reaching the status of fashionable, performative accessories. 

Text & Spirit is part of a digitisation project funded by the Department of Culture and Science of the City of Frankfurt am Main. As part of the digitisation project, the Museum Angewandte Kunst selected works of art from its collection that were rarely or never exhibited and researched before due to their fragility and exceptional value including Christian prayer books from  the late Middle Ages in the form of psalters, breviaries and books of hours as illuminated manuscripts, which originate from the private collections of the brothers Michael (1830-1892) and Albert Linel (1833-1916) and Wilhelm Peter Metzler (1818-1904).