The Murder of Thomas Becket, page one, from a Book of Hours

Nicolas Brouwer · 1430/40

Medium

Manuscript cutting with tempera and gold leaf, and pen and black ink, on parchment

Original size

23.7 × 15.6 cm (9 3/8 × 6 3/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

This vivid illumination from a Book of Hours captures the martyrdom of Thomas Becket with the concentrated intensity that defined Flemish manuscript painting in the early fifteenth century. Nicolas Brouwer worked within a tradition in which every inch of parchment was treated as precious — his use of tempera alongside burnished gold leaf creates a luminous, jewel-like quality that still radiates from the original nearly six hundred years on. The pen-and-ink linework underlying the composition gives the figures a crisp, almost sculptural presence unusual in manuscript cuttings of this scale. Brouwer's handling of the scene reflects the devotional purpose of the Book of Hours: this was art made to be held close, prayed over, and returned to daily. Becket's murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 became one of the most frequently depicted moments in medieval sacred art, with his canonisation just three years later ensuring the scene appeared in Books of Hours across Europe for centuries. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the delicate layering and chromatic richness of the original into a format made to last and be displayed — preserving the drama and spiritual gravity Brouwer encoded into every brushstroke on that small, extraordinary piece of parchment.