Hours of Louis XII

The naturalism is rather reduced by the brightly coloured acanthus leaves being depicted as part of whichever plant is shown, and the insects are not very naturalistic.

[11] The full-page miniatures, except for the calendar, are given fictive frames, plain with a bevel, painted naturalistically to resemble gilded wood.

[12] The standard arrangement of a book of hours, though somewhat variable, allows the sequence of the original volume to be reconstructed with some confidence, helped by the texts at the bottom and versos of miniature pages.

Next of the surviving miniatures was probably the Betrayal of Christ (Musée Marmottan), introducing the Passion according to John, though the placing of this section varies.

[18] It has been speculated that the book may have been given to, or taken by, Henry's youngest daughter Mary Tudor, Queen of France, who was Louis's third wife.

Mary is known to have brought one other fine book of hours back from France, which she later gave to her brother Henry VIII.

[19] The book was at any rate in England when it was broken up around 1700, when the diarist Samuel Pepys put together albums with specimens of calligraphy that he bequeathed to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where they remain.

The bound volume of text pages is part of the Royal manuscripts, British Library, donated by George III in 1757.

After a sale by his family in 1920 it was bought by Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, later being confiscated by the Nazi occupiers, and returned after World War II.

[25] The other miniatures all emerged in England, with possible exception of the one in the Musée Marmottan, which was in the collection of the dealer and collector Georges Wildenstein (1892–1963).

Before his death in 2004, the dealer and collector Bernard H. Breslauer had assembled a group of four, now again split (two to the Getty, plus Louvre and private collection).