The Mass of St. Gregory, from a Book of Hours

Willem Vrelant · 1460/70

Medium

Manuscript cutting in tempera and liquid gold on parchment

Original size

10.5 × 6.2 cm (4 3/16 × 2 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

This luminous manuscript cutting captures one of the most devotionally charged scenes in late medieval Christianity — the moment Pope Gregory the Great beheld a vision of the suffering Christ rising from the altar during Mass. Willem Vrelant was among the most prolific illuminators working in Bruges during the mid-fifteenth century, producing richly detailed pages for the devotional books favored by Burgundian court patrons and wealthy merchants alike. His technique combined the jewel-like precision of tempera pigments with liquid gold that catches light as the page is turned, creating an effect that feels less like paint and more like something genuinely illuminated from within. The small scale of a manuscript cutting makes the density of detail all the more remarkable — faces, vestments, and architectural settings rendered with a fineness that rewards close looking. The Mass of St. Gregory was among the most widely reproduced subjects in late medieval devotional art, frequently associated with indulgence imagery and the growing emphasis on Eucharistic piety that defined fifteenth-century religious life. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates Vrelant's intimate, gold-touched world into a format meant to be lived with — preserving the warm palette, the layered depth of the figures, and the quiet reverence that makes the original so affecting even six centuries on.