Les Belles Heures du duc de Berry — Le Louvre — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: April 5 → June 25, 2012

One of the most celebrated manuscripts, the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry is the focus of an exhibition featuring 47 individual leaves. This will be the last chance to admire them before they return to The Cloisters collection, the medieval branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for rebinding.

This exceptional book of hours was illuminated at the turn of the 15th century by the Limbourg brothers, who combined beautiful “picture book” cycles, inventive composition, and an innovative conception of space and narration.

The book of hours for private devotional prayer was the most popular devotional book in the late Middle Ages. Like many of the great bibliophiles of his time, Jean de Berry had a penchant for this type of manuscript. His name is linked to a prestigious series of books of hours he commissioned for his personal use between the last quarter of the 14th century and his death in 1416. Those that have survived to our day are considered masterpieces of book illumination in France, and all of Europe for that matter, in the late Middle Ages.