Two leaves from a book of hours, with miniature depicting the Annunciation to the Shepherds

These two leaves, framed as a facing pair, are from a late fifteenth century Book of Hours. Books of Hours increasingly became the principal manuscript used for personal devotion beginning in the later thirteenth century. They are so named because the daily devotions were divided into eight segments to be read at specific times during the day. The text page on the right opens the devotions of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin for “Tierce” to be read at 9:00 in the morning. The page on the left contains a miniature of the Annunciation to the Shepherds, which traditionally illustrated this hour. The style of the decorated initials, elaborate borders with acanthus sprays, and the miniature with its flat landscape and ball-like stippled trees are all consistent with the style of illumination current in northern France in about the 1460s. (From “A Handbook of the Collection: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art,” 1998)