Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts

Book of Hours
France, Artois, early 14th century
MS G.59 fol. 33v

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Christ: Nativity -- Virgin Mary, veiled, sits on a draped bed, holding the swaddled Christ Child; the heads of ox and ass appear above the manger. To right, nimbed Joseph the Carpenter, wearing a pointed hat, sits, raising his right hand and holding a tau-staff in his left hand. Scene within a crocketed trefoil architectural frame and a finial, within initial D decorated with interlace and foliage and with diapered spandrels.
Margins - Rectilinear bars decorated with foliage, and inhabited by two birds, and a dog pursuing rabbit; animal on the initial spandrel.