Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux

Hours of Jeanne d'Évreux, around 1324 to 1328, The Met Cloisters, New York. A tiny prayer book, barely four inches tall, made for the queen of France, wife of King Charles IV, and illuminated by Jean Pucelle. Its figures are worked in grisaille, soft shades of gray with only touches of color. On this opening the soldiers crowd in to arrest Christ on the left, while on the right the angel greets the Virgin at the Annunciation. Below her, inside the initial, Jeanne herself kneels at prayer, and the margins fill with tumbling figures at play.