Richly illuminated Book of Hours with an unprecedented and strikingly beautiful series of illuminations in which miniscule figures are executed with painstaking detail, often in large empty landscapes or crowded street scenes and surrounded by lush gold decoration. This is a virtuoso performance by a goldsmith-turned illuminator, Francesco del Chierico, pictures which he could have done only with magnification. Was his intention simply to make readers marvel at his prodigious skill or, also, to change the very nature of devotion when image-gazing? 



A complete description is available upon request.