Illustration as Preface and Postscript in the Hours of the Virgin of Trinity College MS. B. 11. 7

Abstract

This article examines the cycle of paired Infancy and Passion scenes accompanying the Hours of the Virgin in Trinity College MS. B. 11. 7, an English book of hours written in the late fourteenth century but largely illuminated in the early fifteenth century. Comparison with other contemporary English books of hours reveals that the illustrative cycle in the Trinity Hours results from the inclusion of the text of the short Hours of the Cross interleaved with the Hours of the Virgin. While the Infancy scenes serve as prefaces to each Hour of the Virgin, the Passion scenes function as visual postscripts to each Hour of the Cross and are placed immediately following the texts they illustrate. The recognition that illustrations are used in the Trinity Hours as postscripts to texts as well as prefaces offers a new insight into the ways in which texts and images could be combined in late medieval books of hours. The analysis of the Trinity Hours offered here shows that the subsidiary text of the short Hours of t...