Incomplete Book of Hours: Hours of the Virgin, Pelican Wounding Chest to Feed Young with her Blood

This Book of Hours was made ca. 1310-20, likely in Ghent. It was badly rebound with a sixteenth-century Flemish binding by Léon Gruel in Paris at the end of the nineteenth or early twentieth century, and the initials of Gruel and Engelmann are printed on the bookplate on the front pastedown. The manuscript lacks its calendar, and the text is incomplete and misbound. In the fourteenth century a prayer for Communion, written in French, was added at the end of the book. Initials in gold, blue and pink mark the divisions of the text. The manuscript is richly illuminated with drolleries; painted on the borders of each folio, they would have amused the reader with their playful animals, hybrids, and human figures.

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.

Acquired by Léon Gruel, Paris, late 19th-early 20th century; purchased by Henry Walters, Baltimore; by bequest to Walters Art Museum, 1931.