New Exhibition: Demons and Devotion

I'm sure you all have your calendars marked already for the opening on Friday, January 22nd of Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves at the Morgan Library. This Dutch masterpiece, circa 1440, and its iconic Hell-mouth (which I've been seeing a lot lately) miniature is long overdue for an exhibition.

The Morgan's show will display the pages, which were cut out of the original manuscript in the 1850s, glued back together and sold as two separate books to two separate collectors, unbound. At the end of the exhibition in May, the Morgan's conservation staff will decide how to rebind the pages in a looser fashion for preservation and storage. The show will display 93 of the 157 illuminations, though a facsimile version will be available to view as well. (You can get your own, for the low low price of $15,000.) You can check out a digital facsimile for free on the Morgan's website, here.

The show will also include a selection of 18 additional manuscripts from Flanders, all contemporary to the Catherine of Cleves Hours. For a peek at some of the stylistic points the exhibition will cover, click here.

As usual, the Morgan has a series of lectures and gallery talks associated with the exhibit, all of which look extremely interesting. I'm hoping to catch "The Hours of Catherine of Cleves: What Makes a Dutch Masterpiece," a lecture by Dr. James Marrow on February 24th. A complete calendar of lectures and gallery talks can be found here .