Stonyhurst Hours (Use of Sarum)

Beaufort Saints Group · c. 1400–10

Medium

Manuscript in pen and colored inks with gilding, with fifteen miniatures in tempera on vellum, with tooled leather binding

Original size

20 × 14.5 × 5 cm (7 7/8 × 5 3/4 × 2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Medieval

The Stonyhurst Hours radiates the intimate devotional beauty of late medieval English manuscript art, its vellum pages alive with delicate gilding and richly layered tempera that have barely dimmed across six centuries. The work belongs to the Beaufort Saints Group, a cluster of manuscripts produced in England around 1400–1410 and named for their stylistic ties to the circle of patrons surrounding the powerful Beaufort family. Illuminators working in this tradition combined the fluid linearity of Anglo-French Gothic with a close attention to devotional detail — faces rendered with quiet expressiveness, borders threaded with gold, and miniature scenes compressed into jewel-like precision. The Use of Sarum, the dominant liturgical rite of medieval England before the Reformation, shapes the calendar and prayers throughout, anchoring the manuscript firmly in its time and place. The manuscript takes its common name from Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, where it was preserved for generations before entering the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Because the original is a manuscript rather than a panel painting, our hand-painted oil reproduction interprets its visual language onto canvas — preserving the warmth of the gold leaf effects, the richness of its palette, and the meditative stillness that made Books of Hours among the most treasured objects of the medieval world.