Passion according to St John
Texts and Images
An optional, but increasingly popular section in Book of Hours, this text is based on the account of Christ’s Passion found in St John’s Gospel. It opens with a large miniature of the Agony in the Garden and a full historiated border showing the events leading up to Christ’s Arrest.
Strewn-flower border panel
The Fitzwilliam Hours includes a wide range of borders, a veritable gallery of the formats and styles admired across the Latin West around 1500. The majority showcase the hallmark of Flemish illumination since the 1480s, the panels of liquid gold or solid colours, occasionally compartmentalised, that serve as the backdrop for flowers, plants, insects and birds painted as if scattered across the surface and casting their shadows upon it.