Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

238. MS M.399, fol. 119v

ca. 1515

Da Costa hours
Illuminated by Simon Bening (1483/84–1561)

Ghent, Belgium
172 x 125 mm
MS M.399, fol. 119v

Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913), 1910

Within a room, a nimbed Evangelist Mark is seated at a lectern on a writing desk. On the desk are scissors, an inkpot, a knife, and scraps of parchment. Two books with clasps, one of which is open, are on the floor beside the table. He writes in a book with a pen held in his right hand and a scraper in his left hand. A nimbed, winged lion lies on the ground behind him. The room is furnished with a bench and a credenza, on which are two candles flanking a panel painting of Christ holding a globe. A convex mirror, a pitcher, and a round object are within a partially shuttered window. A birdcage hangs on the left wall above a niche with a candle.
The scene is framed by a historiated border depicting two men and a woman in a boat with a canopy on a lake within a landscape. One man drinks from a jug. The woman plays a lute. The second man plays a pipe. Beside him are a canteen and a tree branch. In the background is a building with a bridge over lake.