The Visitation, from a Book of Hours

Master of the Privileges of Ghent and Flanders · c. 1440-1445

Medium

Manuscript with 230 folios, 12 full-page miniatures and other decorations in gold leaf, tempera and colored inks, and littera textualis inscriptions in Latin and French in dark black ink, ruled in red with red rubrics, on parchment, with two parchment fly leaves upper cover, three parchment fly leaves lower cover, sheets with gilded edges, in modern binding of brown morocco leather over wooden boards

Original size

Book: 19 × 13.5 cm (7 1/2 × 5 3/8 in.); Sheets: 11.5 × 10 cm (4 9/16 × 3 15/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

This intimate illumination from a Flemish Book of Hours renders the Visitation — Mary's meeting with her cousin Elizabeth — with the quiet tenderness and jewel-like precision that defines the finest manuscript painting of the period. The Master of the Privileges of Ghent and Flanders worked in the mid-fifteenth century within the thriving Flemish manuscript industry, producing devotional books for wealthy patrons at the Burgundian court. Working in tempera and colored inks on parchment, with gold leaf adding luminosity to architectural details and halos, this artist achieved a remarkable depth of feeling within the small, contained world of the manuscript page. The figures are graceful but grounded, set against the kind of intricate architectural backdrop that Flemish illuminators handled with particular confidence. Books of Hours like this one — with 230 folios, twelve full-page miniatures, and gilded page edges — were among the most costly objects a fifteenth-century patron could commission, functioning as both personal prayer books and demonstrations of refined taste. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the warmth of the original's palette and the delicacy of its figure work into a format made to endure on a wall, bringing the devotional intimacy of this medieval miniature into a contemporary space.