The Hours of Isabella Stuart

Office of the Dead and scenes from the Pilgrimage of the Soul

Texts and Images

The Office of the Dead, recited while mourning the dead body at home and during the service in church before the burial, was also a text for private devotion. It opens with a large miniature showing a funeral Mass. Every page has a marginal miniature from the cycle illustrating the French poem Pilgrimage of the Soul.

This complex composition, with its numerous protagonists and sophisticated architecture, is the work of an accomplished artist. He assisted the Giac, Rohan and Madonna Masters by providing two other large images (fols. 119r, 134r). The theme of death received a more graphic representation in the cadavers painted in the initial and border. The marginal scene begins the Pilgrimage of the Soul cycle, which harmonises with the Office of the Dead. The arms of Isabella Stuart have been added to the border.