Book of Hours

This book is decorated with twenty-nine highly sophisticated illuminations in grisaille (monochrome paintings, in this case in tones of grey). The gold is applied by brush on the frames around the scenes and on some of the details of the figures and objects. The illuminations by Marmion, who had his studio in Valenciennes, near Cambrai (in the Duchy of Burgundy), is influenced by the work of the Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden, whom he may have met at the court of his patron Duke Philippe le Bon. The style of the faces, the ample, crumpled drapery and the precise rendering of the interiors, with their furniture, everyday objects and windows looking out over the landscape, all derive from this tradition. The delight in rendering nature and the essentiality of the narrative (few figures in interiors with carefully constructed perspective) take from French illuminations in the second half of the fifteenth century.