Leaf Excised from the Tarleton Hours: Christ Carrying the Cross, c. 14

Leaf Excised from the Tarleton Hours: Christ Carrying the Cross (Terce, Office of the Virgin), c. 1430. This leaf was formerly folio 74 of the Tarleton Hours , a manuscript named after the family that owned it between 1784 and 1951. It was originally made according to Sarum Use?the liturgical use followed in England?and therefore for an English owner. As some of the Latin prayers take the feminine form, the manuscript must have been made for a woman. The book was certainly illuminated in Rouen in Normandy, which was still under English occupation due to the Hundred Years War. As the administrative capital of Normandy, Rouen was the site of a major cathedral and an emerging center of the book trade; the Tarleton Hours was likely written and illuminated there, then carried across the channel by its English owner. The manuscript's miniatures appear to fuse the styles of the Parisian masters Boucicaut and Rohan. After the fall of Paris to the English, many illuminators moved to various provincial centers in search of work and patrons, thus disseminating their respective styles.