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This manuscript was illuminated by a circle of at least five highly organized manuscript painters active in the Flemish cities of Ghent and Bruges. The principal illuminator was Alexander Bening, who painted the majority of the book's miniatures. Manuscripts produced by this circle of artists are renowned for the decoration of their borders, which typically feature a rich variety of realistically-painted flowers, birds, and butterflies. This prayer book, called a book of hours, was intended not for a cleric, but for the private devotions of a lay person-in this case, Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain (1451-1504). Isabella's coat of arms embellishes the book's frontispiece. It is unlikely that the book was commissioned by the Queen herself; rather, she probably received it as a diplomatic gift from someone courting her patronage, perhaps Cardinal Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros. A Franciscan friar, Jimenez was dependent upon Isabella for his advancement, first to the post of Queen's confessor in 1492, and then to Archbishop of Toledo in 1495.

Flanders, Ghent and Bruges, late 15th century

ink, tempera, and gold on vellum

Codex: 22.5 x 15.2 cm (8 7/8 x 6 in.)

Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund

clevelandart.org/art/1963.256.182.b

Raven's Head in Profile 1875 by museado

Edouard Manet created this lithograph for his friend Stephane Mallarmé’s 1875 French translation of American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s classic poem “The Raven” (1845) about a man mourning his deceased love who is visited by a raven that repeatedly cries, “Nevermore.” Mallarmé’s edition is considered one of the first modern <em>livres d’artistes</em>—books created specifically as works of visual art. Manet created four full-page illustrations, including the scene in which the raven stares at the narrator from the top of the bust of the goddess Athena, and a raven head design used on the book’s cover and on its advertising poster.

France, 19th century

lithograph

Image: 17 x 15.5 cm (6 11/16 x 6 1/8 in.); Sheet: 32.5 x 24.7 cm (12 13/16 x 9 3/4 in.)

Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund

clevelandart.org/art/1923.215

by Frederick County Public Libraries