Book of Hours

Suffrages to saints

Texts and Images

Each suffrage (short prayer) opens with a large miniature showing the saint – or an event from his or her life – and a full architectural or strewn-flower border.

St Philip is shown with a cross-staff and St James with a staff and a book. The Master of James IV of Scotland painted the saints’ images, using his characteristic palette of lead-tin yellow, azurite, clay-rich ochre mixed with a copper pigment, a copper carbonate or sulphate mixed with lead-tin yellow in green areas, and indigo used to obtain grey hues.

The Painter of Additional 15677 supplied the architectural border, where he used the purple dye which characterises his palette as well as mosaic gold, which was only identified in two other pages within this manuscript.