Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

The Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry is an illuminated book of hours, a Christian devotional manuscript of prayers for set times of day, begun around 1412 to 1416 by the three Limbourg brothers, Paul, Johan and Herman, for their patron Jean, Duke of Berry, and later completed in stages through the 1480s by the painter Jean Colombe and an unidentified intermediate artist. Its 206 leaves of fine parchment carry 66 large miniatures and 65 smaller ones, most famously a calendar cycle of scenes from aristocratic and peasant life across the months of the year that has shaped popular images of the medieval world. Held today by the Musee Conde in Chantilly, France, it remained largely unknown for nearly three centuries before regaining wide recognition in the late nineteenth century, and it is considered one of the most lavish surviving illuminated manuscripts of the late Middle Ages.