Book of Hours were prayer books designed for the laity, but modeled on the Divine Office, a cycle of daily devotions, prayers and readings, performed by members of religious orders and the clergy. Its central text is the Hours of the Virgin. There are eight hours (times for prayer ): Matins, Lauds. Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. During the Middle Ages, the leaves making up a Book of Hours were written by hand on expensive parchment and beautifully illuminated with jewel-like pigments and gold leaf. These illuminated manuscripts combined the collaborative efforts of an array of highly skilled craftspeople; requiring the joint labors of the parchmenter, professional scribes to write the text in Gothic script, artists to illuminate the pages with decorations, and masterful binders to complete the process.

A handsome vellum leaf from a French Book of Hours, written at the end of the Middle Ages, in Angers on the river Loire. This region was well known for its workshops and many masters who worked there, like Jouvenel, Robinet Tesard and the Master of the Geneva Boccaccio. This leaf is written in black ink in a very regular bookhand with red rubrics and embellished with several initials and line fillers in red, blue and liquid gold. The text is from the Hours of the Virgin, Lauds, the psalms 149 and 150.

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Condition: A+