Prologue for a Book of Hours

Helen Reid Cross

Hand-illuminated on one page of vellum.

42.6 x 25.3 cm.

Beckwith, Victorian Bibliomania catalogue no. 61

Collection: Koopman Collection, John Hay Library, Brown University

Books of Hours first appeared in the Middle Ages to accompany the widespread devotions to Mary, mother of Christ. Lay people of wealth often commissioned scribes to write and paint books for private prayer, called books of hours, because the day was divided into eight equal parts with texts to be read at each of the intervals, i.e., midnight, 3 a.m., 6 a.m., 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., 6 p.m., and 9 p.m. When prayed as an office or devotion in a conventual environment the hours were named: Matins (or Noctums), Laudes, Prime, Terce, Sixt, Nones, Vespers, and Compline. [continued below]

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Commentary by Alice H. R. H. Beckwith

Moments in Mary's life became associated with each of the hours and often manuscript illuminators pictured the event beside the prayers (Thorpe, 3-4).

Helen Reid Cross took the form of thirteenth- to fourteenth-century books of hours as her inspiration in this vellum broadside; however, she did not copy a particular work nor did she include all eight hours. Cross numbered her hours of the Virgin one through seven, and described the miniature illustration for each hour in rhymed couplets employing archaic English words and spelling. Her stacking the scenes in a column, separated by pointed arches and trefoils, recalls thirteenth- and fourteenth-century usage, and the architectural allusion is completed by the Gothic arcade in the uppermost compartment. An initial A announces each hour and joins the text to the border, as in medieval manuscripts dedicated to the Virgin which began the lines with Ave. Such Aves also influenced William Morris's Laudes Beatae Mariae Virginis (cat. 11). Further thirteenth- and fourteenth-century reminiscences are seen in Cross's sprightly zoomorphic extenders with entwined vines which carry the ornament into the margins of the page at head and tail, as found in works such as the British Museum's Evangelica per Circulum Anni, a French manuscript of ca. 1300.

We know no other works by Cross, and of her life only that she lived at Isington Farm, Wells, Somerset, from the gold-stamped title on the broadside cover.

References

Beckwith, Alice H. R. H. Victorian Bibliomania: The Illuminated Book in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Exhibition catalogue. Providence. Rhode Island: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1987.

Cross, Helen Reid. Prologue for a Book of Hours. n. d. Koopman Collection, John Hay Library, Brown University.

Thorpe, James. Book of Hours, Illuminations by Simon Marmion. San Marino: The Huntington Library, n.d.

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Last modified 27 December 2013