Customer Reviews

The Visconti Hours

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The Visconti Hours, one of the most luxurious and unusual Italian Books of Hours from around 1400, is magnificently reproduced in this facimile edition. The introductory text begins with an excellent summary of the political and social context of the book's production for Giangaleazzo Visconti, its noble owner. It continues with a discussion of the book's structure, iconography, and painting techniques, and includes short biographies of the two artists.

The plates themselves are of particularly high quality, sharp, clear, and brilliant, with gold stamping. The commentaries are informative.

All in all, this book is a must-have for any serious student of medieval illumination, as well as for the simple pleasure of enjoying its outstanding beauty.

The Visconti Hours dates was painted in Italy for the Visconti family of Florence in the early 1400's. This book reproduces the illuminated carpet pages from this manuscript along with an introduction to the history of the book and commenty on individual plates. The plates themselves are very colourful and striking filled with vivid pinks, purples and greens. There were two main artists who produced this book and their work is quite distinctive giving the second half of the book quite a different flavour from the first half.

My main complaints about this reproduction is that the gold ink that has been used to recreate the effect of gold leaf in the original book has somewhat obscured some of the detail in the facsimile plates, and that some of the edges of the pages appear to have been chopped off to forced into the current book size which gives the impression of the illuminations spilling off the page or amputated in some cases.

However, these quibbles aside, this is a striking manuscript, well worthy of reproduction and every time you look at you are astonished at the brightness of the plates and the colours the artists selected. They are very different from the books produced in France and England during the same period. This book, in hardback, with a slipcase, is recommended to anybody who enjoys the striking beauty of medieval illuminated manuscripts.

The Visconti Hours is easily the most richly decorated and most eye-popping manuscript that I have ever seen. As a chapter in art history, it is unique as well. The Visconti family had strong connections with the French court, and that definitely shows itself in the art here, especially in the "gold maple" design of 79 verso and 80 recto, for example. It is also among the most unique in terms of pallete - neon greens and magentas next to deep blues and shining gold on some pages, or various pastel pinks and blues with a unique form of reddish gold on others. Two artists contributed to complete this manuscript, and unlike most other manuscripts, it is extremely easy to tell their two styles apart here; the artists made little attempt at stylistic continuity. Dei Grassi, the earlier of the two artists, can be identified by his less crowded compositions, use of pastel colors, more naturalistic figures, and a somewhat "dirtier" style. The later Belbello, on the other hand, had immaculate brushwork, enjoyed a rather bright (possibly jarring) pallete, employed tapestry-like densely decorated borders, and painted rather artificial, oddly cheeky figures (especially the women). The miniatures are gorgeous, but for me the main point of interest was in the borders and illuminated initials. Gem-like stylized leaves, ribbons, clouds, sloping hills, and gothic architectural elements make up some unusually creative designs. Most of the prayers begin with D, so you will find more ways to draw and paint a simple D than you have ever seen before (perhaps even if you are familiar with medieval art - there is more emphasis than usual on the initials here, considering the period). Interesting also is the stylistic continuity between the scene depicted inside the initial and the border designs. For example, one page showing the creation of birds in the Genesis (leaf 41) shows a veritable Noah's ark of birds - egrets (?), hawks, a peacock... - perched in the lower border.

The facsimile is fabulous in my opinion. As noted by others, the gold ink they use isn't quite like the original gold leaf and gold emulsion. It tends to have a flattening effect. But trust me, it is better than no gold at all - in that case, gold is replaced by dull browns that really just dull the entire composition. The recent Tres Riches Heures facsimile is testament to that. The best option would be to see the actual manuscript, since reproductions never do the original justice, but in lieu of that this is a more than satisfactory facsimile.

I just wanted to address/correct another review on here. Indeed many of the borders are slightly cut off, but that probably is *not* just the facsimile. As mentioned in the text (I forget where), overzealous cutting of pages during 19th century rebinding has resulted in some loss of whitespace and cutting off of the designs. It's really unfortunate, but it has happened to many manuscripts. Apparently 19th century connoisseurs preferred to sacrifice the composition of the borders in order to have clean page edges.

The Visconti Hours is simply the most beautiful book of medieval illuminated text ever published. The Visconti Hours plates were painted in Italy for the Visconti family of Florence in the early 1400's. This book reproduces the illuminated carpet pages from this manuscript along with an introduction to the history of the book and comments on individual plates. The introductory text begins with an excellent summary of the political and social context of the time.