Très Belles Heures de Notre-Dame de Jean de Berry, the Heures de Turin-Milan

The Heures manuscript for Jean de Berry, which was started in about 1380, is one of the finest achievements of late-Gothic European culture. The volume originally contained about 400 folios and at least 280 illuminations. It was divided in two parts: the first remained in France (now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris), while the second went to the Low Countries, where work continued on it for about thirty years. The Turin fragment, with 28 pages and 25 large illuminations, came from the latter. It was ceded by the City of Milan in 1935 as compensation for the unsuccessful purchase of the Trivulzio Collection. Another part of this volume, which was already in the library of Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, was destroyed in a fire at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino in 1904. The most famous illustrations in the Turin fragment, The Birth of the Baptist and the Requiem Mass are some of Jan van Eyck’s greatest masterpieces, illustrating his revolutionary message, which ranged from an analytical investigation of reality to the majestic illusion of perspective space.