Hours of James IV of Scotland

The 1503 resulting in Ghent or Bruges prayer book of James IV of Scotland and his wife Margaret Tudor is a book of hours, the painting of the high points of Gothic Ghent-Bruges reputed schools counts. It is now in the Austrian National Library in Vienna ( Austrian National Library Inventory, Codex Vindobonensis 1897).

The prayer book consists of 493 pages, which are adorned with some 65 full-page miniatures. All pages are edged with sidebars containing in great detail representations of flowers and leaves, and small creatures. The book was probably created jointly by several artists in a workshop. Among the pictures can be found in the calendar twelve full-color landscape images with signs of the zodiac. Also, it contains two donor portraits, this show James IV of Scotland and his wife Margaret Tudor, works that were painted with great certainty only after other completion of the book on released sides and after these portraits designated by the with a Notnamen book painter Jacob IV of Scotland come.

It is believed that prayer book was a wedding gift from Jacob or any other Scottish nobles to Margaret. Show pictures of Jacob before an altar on which the patron of Scotland, the apostle Andrew is to see and Margret is painted in veneration of the Mother of God. The Wedding of Jacob and Margret occurred in 1503 in Scotland instead, and the book is further provided with pictures, the coat of arms of the Scottish royal house. The prayer book has a special meaning as a memento of a special event in the history of Scotland and shall continue as an important example of Gothic manuscript illumination in the Netherlands.

The book is sometimes considered as a common work of Gerard Horenbout, court painter to the Governor General of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria, and the Maximilians- master, two of the most important representative of Flemish book art. This identification is not necessarily clearly detectable.