Limbourg brothers, Paul,

Hermann and Jean 1370s or 1380s

Très Riches Heures

painted between 1412 and 1416

The Très Riches Heures is the classic example of a medieval book of hours. This was a collection of the text for each liturgical hour of the day - hence the name - which often included other, supplementary, texts. Calendars, prayers, psalms and masses for certain holy days were commonly included. One of the great art treasures of France in terms of historical and cultural importance, it marks the pinnacle of the art of manuscript illumination.

In the rural and civil scenes shown breathes the work a quiet, peaceful consciousness of time, quite unknown to our present modern society. Everybody is doing his work as a servant of eternity as if in a natural prayer. Evidently God is still nature in the time these works were produced, although the mechanical of modern time was rising from each churchtower already. Little did one know then how it would work out later with the decaying of modern time manipulation and the estrangement and neurosis of our later stressful commercial culture.

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© Time Art Gallery/hall 6