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Prints as underdrawings in 16th-century French Horae

Books of Hours (Horae) were the undisputed medieval ‘bestsellers.’ They had a profound effect on European devotional, educational, and aesthetic practices. Gilles and Germain Hardouyn, active in Paris from 1491 to 1541, specialized in hybrid printed Horae that were hand-painted in imitation of illuminated manuscripts.

Printed Horae were found in libraries across Europe but Paris was the hub of production, which began in the 1480s. By 1530, more than 1600 editions had been printed. Printed Horae by the Hardouyns can look deceptively like their manuscript counterparts, with over-painted prints, supplementary painted decoration, and true miniatures. Sometimes the only indication that such books had been printed was the regularity of the typeface.

Warren will discuss why these prints imitate the effects of illuminations as well as the broader implications of this practice, which question the history of printmaking as a linear trajectory of ever-increasing media specificity.

Maureen Warren’s research interests include early modern (1500-1800) Netherlandish art and European print media more broadly. At KAM, Warren has curated exhibitions on medieval manuscripts (2016-2017) and the intersection of art and science in early modern Europe (2017). Warren completed a Ph.D. in art history at Northwestern University in 2015, where her research was supported a Kress Institutional Fellowship to Leiden University, a Scaliger Fellowship, and a Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon Fellowship. Warren has published essays in Death, Torture and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300-1650 (2015); Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and the Portrait Print (2016); and Word & Image (forthcoming).

For more information, visit www.library.illinois.edu/rbx.