Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts

Egmont breviary
Netherlands, Utrecht, ca. 1440
MS M.87 fol. 373r

See more information »

Miniature, column, right: Virgin Mary: Death -- Beneath cloudy arc of heaven in which are two busts of angels supporting personification of Virgin Mary, nimbed and veiled with wimple, eyes closed, reclines on canopied, draped bed with pillow. She grasps with right hand lit candle held in right hand of Peter, nimbed, wearing cope fastened with morse. Of the other eleven apostles (most with only heads visible), two with joined hands raised and another two, in front of the bed, one kneeling at prie-dieu, the other seated, both reading from open book with pseudo-inscriptions. All are nimbed. Scene in bedroom with tiled floor. Miniature for Chapter of 1st Vespers for Vigil of Feast of Assumption of the Virgin (08.15). Initial I enclosing half figure of tonsured cleric with right hand raised. Margins decorated on three sides with scrolling floreate and foliate decoration, inhabited by five half figures of possibly helmeted soldiers emerging from foliate buds (right).