Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts

Book of Hours
Netherlands, ca. 1520
MS M.74 fol. 62v

See more information »

Innocents: Massacre -- Helmeted soldier, with left hand grasping left arm of nude infant and with right hand holding sword piercing its neck, among two women on ground, one wearing headdress, weeping into cloth beside body of bleeding infant, partly draped, and the other, wearing wimpled headdess, wringing hands above her head. In background, behind fence, at least four groups of silhouetted soldiers, some on hoseback or carrying lances or raising swords, some on rocky hill in distance. Margins decorated with borders of strewn flowers, including viola and white rose. Miniature facing the beginning of Vespers in Hours of the Virgin.