Title

Book of Hours. Alfonso de Castile

miniaturist

Juan de Carrión [attributed to] [workshop of] (Documented in the last third of the 15th century)

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Inscriptions / Marks

By order and commission of the illustrious Inquisitors of Valladolid, these hours were seen and examined by my Nicolás Ramos.

Object history

This manuscript preserved in The Morgan Library & Museum (New York) has been linked to the infant Alfonso of Castile (1453-1468), son of John II of Castile and Isabella of Portugal. This linkage was the work of Morales Muñiz (1996), who considered that Don Alfonso was represented on folio 15v. In addition, this author affirmed that the heraldic details of the manuscript on folios 15v and 34v corresponded to the arms of the royal house of Castile. This hypothesis was corroborated by Domínguez Rodríguez (2000) when analyzing the coat of arms on folio 15v.

Bosch (1989) thought that four artists had intervened in the making of the manuscript: the Master of the Morgan Calendar, the Master Mendoza, the Master of the Veronica and the Master of the Morgan Hours. Although there are no references about the miniaturist responsible for the volume, he has recently been linked to the workshop of Juan de Carrión, who worked in Avila and Segovia between 1470-1496 (Bosch, 2000; Villaseñor, 2009). The Libro de Horas follows the same compositional schemes and the same style as manuscripts linked to Juan de Carrión's workshop (Rodríguez, 2024), such as El Libro de la Montería (Madrid) or El Libro del Caballero Zifar (Paris). Therefore, if we base ourselves on the formal concomitances of these manuscripts, it seems plausible to think that it was the work of Juan de Carrión's workshop.

Thus, the Book of Hours must have been made in Avila or Segovia. A note in the codex reads: "By order and commission of the illustrious inquisitors of Valladolid, these hours were seen and examined by my brother Nicolás Ramos". In 1588 Nicolás Ramos was appointed bishop of Puerto Rico, however, thanks to the inscription the manuscript can be located in Valladolid (Villaseñor, 2015). The volume was bound in the time of Philip V, as shown by the red tafilete with his arms (Domínguez Bordona, 1929). In 1894 the collection of Count Lignerolles was sold in Paris and the Catalogue des libres rares et prècieux included this book. Later, in 1929, it was in the hands of Baron Joseph Raphaël Vitta and in 1951 it became part of the Morgan Library collection thanks to the intervention of H. P. Kraus (Villaseñor, 2015).

Description

This manuscript is composed of twenty-four large-format miniatures and eight smaller ones. Among the figurative motifs, putti and birds predominate. The use of bluish gray with golden hues, together with the design of the border that frames the pages, is characteristic of the Castilian environment at the end of the 15th century (Villaseñor, 2015). Some folios of the codex corresponding to the calendar and the festivities of the year remain unfinished.

Locations

• Third quarter of the XV^th c. - Early XVI^th c.

  region

  Possible origin from Castile and Leon, Castilla y León (Spain)

• XVI^th c.

  municipality

  Valladolid, Valladolid (Spain)

• XVII^th c. - Mid XVIII^th c.

  private collection

  Philip V of Spain, Madrid (Spain) *

• XIX^th c. - 1894

  private collection

  Raoul Léonor Lignerolles, comte de Lignerolles, Paris (France) *

• First quarter of the XX^th c. - ca. 1951

  private collection

  Joseph Raphaël Vitta, Breuil (France) *

• ca. 1951 - present

  museum

  The Morgan Library, New York (United States)