The Hours of Joanna I of Castile

The Hours of Joanna I of Castile is a sixteenth-century illuminated codex housed in the British Library, London, under call number Add MS 35313.

The miniatures are the work of Gerard Horenbout, the greatest Flemish miniaturist of the 16th century, and Sanders Bening and his workshop, who painted most of the portraits in the Suffrages of the Saints.

The faces charged with emotion and the lively realism of the illuminated scenes make this manuscript one of the most outstanding works of Flemish art.

The Hours of the Cross contain fourteen miniatures arranged in pairs which depict the Passion of Christ from the entrance into Jerusalem to the holy burial.

The manuscript’s finest miniatures are to be found in these two cycles, in which the artist reduces the text inserts to a minimum, sometimes just two lines, to leave as much room as possible for the illumination.