Ms. book of hours for the use of Sarum (Hours of the Virgin, calendar) and Rome (Office of the Dead); written and illuminated in Belgium, perhaps Ghent, ca. 1420; additions in England, ca. 1420.
Decoration: 30 full-page miniatures, decorated initials, and border ornament.
Artists: Master of Guillebert de Mets and two anonymous English artists.
The English artist responsible for the miniatures of the Passion sequence starting on fol. 53v may be the same as the artist of London, British Library, Harley 4605, as well as Illustrator B in the London Psalter (Victoria & Albert Museum, Ms. Reid 42), whose hand is also found in Pierpont Morgan Library MS M.893; the second English artist, responsible for fol. 44v, may be the same as Illustrator C of the Victoria & Albert Psalter--Cf. K. Scott, p. 216.
The Master of Guillebert de Mets is named after the scribe who signed a manuscript (today in Paris) of Boccaccio's Decameron made for Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, to which the artist contributed nearly a third of the hundred miniatures. Active about 1420 to 1445, probably in Ghent, the Guillebert Master and the younger Master of the Ghent Privileges were the two leading illuminators in Flanders during the second quarter of the fifteenth century. (Their similar styles are easily confused.) The Guillebert Master was at times a subtler colorist, as seen in this St. Christopher Carrying the Christ Child.