I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM
Turin–Milan Hours
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Its scattered survival makes this manuscript more than a single object: it is a case study in images, attribution, loss, and the limits of certainty.
At a glance
- Type
- Manuscript
- Inception
- 1420
- Louvre
- Louvre Museum
- Getty
- J. Paul Getty Museum
- Turin
- Museo Civico d'Arte Antica
Look closer
A work of many moments
The manuscript was not made in one simple, continuous stretch. The reference account describes several campaigns of work, involving different artists, assistants and patrons. That layered making matters when looking at its miniatures: differences between pages may record changing hands, changing circumstances, or both.
Images after loss
The Turin portion was destroyed by fire in 1904. Black-and-white photographs survive, however, creating an unusual kind of encounter: some pages can still be studied through reproductions even though the physical leaves are gone. The photographs preserve information, but not the manuscript itself.
Three present homes
The manuscript is now associated with the Louvre Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum and Turin’s Museo Civico d'Arte Antica. Its title therefore describes neither a single volume nor a single location. To approach it now is to approach related surviving parts held apart.
The story
The Turin–Milan Hours is a manuscript whose name conceals a difficult history. It is often called a book of hours, but the reference account cautions that it is not strictly one. More importantly, it no longer survives as an intact book. Its parts are associated with collections in Paris, Los Angeles and Turin, while a portion once in Turin was lost in a fire.
Wikidata records its inception as 1420. The reference account, however, presents the manuscript’s making as extended and collaborative rather than confined to a single moment. It describes different campaigns of work, various patrons and several artists. The earliest leaves are placed within the International Gothic tradition, with decorative surfaces and comparatively shallow space. Later pages are described as pursuing perspective with particular skill.
The most closely watched attribution concerns an artist conventionally called Hand G. Several miniatures of about 1420 have been attributed to this hand. The reference account gives three possibilities: Jan van Eyck, his brother Hubert van Eyck, or an artist closely associated with them. None of those possibilities can be treated as settled here. It also suggests that Barthélemy d'Eyck may have worked on some miniatures later. The manuscript’s importance lies partly in that unresolved concentration of names, styles and questions.
Its survival changes how it can be read. A leaf in a museum is a physical page: an object with a place, a sequence and a material presence. A page known through a black-and-white photograph is something else. It remains available for comparison, but its colour, surface and physical relation to the rest of the volume cannot be recovered in the same way. The 1904 fire is therefore not merely an episode in the manuscript’s history; it shapes the evidence available now.
The supplied information does not give an account of the manuscript’s discovery, nor does it identify a single moment when it was ‘found’. That absence is worth keeping in view. The Turin–Milan Hours comes into focus instead through production, later division, institutional collections and photographic survival. Its story is not one neat recovery, but a record assembled from what remains.
Why it mattered then
Around its inception in 1420, the manuscript’s production belonged to a culture of courtly commission and skilled illumination. The reference account connects its earlier phase to a high-ranking, unidentified member of the French court, and states that it had entered the possession of Jean, Duc de Berry before 1413. By 1420 it was in the possession of John of Bavaria, Count of Holland, whose commissions are said to have involved mainly Flemish artists. That movement between patrons helps explain why the manuscript is associated with more than one artistic manner. It was a setting in which decoration, narrative image and the representation of space could all be developed across a single, evolving object.
Why it matters now
The Turin–Milan Hours still matters because it makes uncertainty visible rather than incidental. Its pages have prompted major questions of attribution, especially around Hand G and the possible involvement of Jan or Hubert van Eyck. Yet the surviving evidence does not close the question. It also asks viewers to think about what survival means. Pages in museum collections and pages preserved only in photographs do not offer the same kind of access. The manuscript remains a powerful object of study precisely because its present form is incomplete, divided and dependent in part on reproduction.
The surprising detail
One of the manuscript’s most consequential surviving records is not a leaf at all, but photography. The Turin portion was destroyed in a fire in 1904, yet black-and-white photographs remain. They allow lost pages to remain part of the discussion, while also making the loss impossible to overlook.
What is disputed
The identity of Hand G is disputed: the artist may have been Jan van Eyck, Hubert van Eyck, or a closely associated artist. Barthélemy d'Eyck’s possible contribution is also not certain. The supplied facts do not provide an account of the manuscript’s discovery.
How it got here
The supplied facts identify current collections at the Louvre Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Museo Civico d'Arte Antica. They do not provide a fuller account of how the separate portions entered those collections, or any contested-ownership context.
Remember this
The Turin–Milan Hours is not one untouched book, but a divided manuscript whose surviving leaves, photographs and disputed hands must be read together.
Test yourself
Why is it misleading to seek one definitive artist for the whole Turin–Milan Hours?
Because the manuscript’s history is described as collaborative and extended across several campaigns of work. Different artists, assistants and patrons were involved, and even the identity behind Hand G remains uncertain. A single-name attribution can be useful for discussing a particular group of miniatures, but it cannot adequately describe the manuscript’s layered making.
Go deeper
Image: Jan van Eyck, Public domain. Licence: Public domain. Source.