Simon Bening - Imago Editore - Il Libro d’Ore del Maestro di Carlo V (anno 1530): edizione facsimile - 2023

The Book of Hours of the Master of Charles V - Ms. W. 425
Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum
16th Century

ISBN: 9791280847096

Copy number: CXLII

Format cm 6.5 x 9
58 leaves
Gold leaf application
Hand-treated parchment
Hand stitching
Mounted on antique paper
Precious leather binding with gold impressions and enamelled medallions

Made in the Flemish Flanders between 1530 and 1538, the Book of Hours of the Master of Charles V is linked to the figure of Mencia de Mendoza (1508–1554), a learned noblewoman and refined collector of the European Renaissance. It was the marquise who commissioned it as a gift for her husband Hendrik III of Nassau, lord of Breda and chamberlain to Emperor Charles V.

The manuscript, small in size, brings together 58 leaves with a rich decorative program: twelve calendar miniatures accompanied by the zodiac signs, fourteen full-page miniatures, thirty-two smaller-format miniatures, and forty-three decorated initials. The scenes are enclosed in painted frames that imitate wood, while the borders host flowers, insects, exotic animals, and architectural motifs, often on a gold ground.

The quality of the miniatures recalls the workshop of Simon Bening, one of the leading interpreters of Flemish miniature painting in the sixteenth century. Alongside the Renaissance history of the codex are the stories of its subsequent owners: from Léon Gruel’s Paris workshop, which produced its binding in the second half of the nineteenth century, to the American collections of Peter Marié and Henry Walters, up to its entry into the Baltimore museum collection.

A book that tells of the artistic taste and private devotion of Renaissance courts, also preserving the memory of a personal gift.

Complete copy with presentation box and commentary.

Published by Imago - The Nobility of the Facsimile