This project aims at bridging the gap between devotional books of the late Middle Ages and devotional books of the Early Modern period. Illuminated manuscript Books of Hours, and the later printed specimens of the genre, have seldom been analyzed in their role of precursors of religious Emblem Books that flooded Europe starting from the late sixteenth century. Italy and the Low Countries (Flanders and, later on, the Netherlands) are at that time both leading the way for European book culture in general. This makes of these two areas a privileged field of inquiry on this subject. Italian Books of Hours on the other hand have only recently been taken into account as a specific type of production, and thus far only in relation to the 14th and 15th centuries, while 16th and 17th century manuscripts still require further inquiries.
Although quite different in format and arrangement of materials, Books of Hours and religious Emblem Books share a meaningful combination of image and text, as well as their function as tools for domestic devotion, destined to a largely female public. The research will focus on such topics as:
- the recurring presence of iconographic motifs
- the model role of Netherlandish/Italian specimens
- the effects of the shift from manuscript to print production
- the influence of Reformation and Counter-Reformation issues on both genres.
