Black Hours, Morgan Library

Black Hours, Pierpont Morgan Library M. 493 (Bl. 18v/19r)

The Black Hours is an illuminated book of Hours. It gains its name from being one of the few surviving books of hours produced in an unusual and elaborate way with blackened margins - another is the Black Hours of Charles the Bold. It is considered as one of the masterpieces of Gothic manuscript illumination and was produced in Bruges in 1475 in the studio of Willem Vrelant, probably for a member of the Burgundian nobility. It is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (with the catalogue reference M. 493).