This book presents one of the most valuable collection of Italian miniatures put together by a private collector, which contains 228 pieces - entire pages, parts of pages, or individual initials - taken from the traditional manuscripts of Christian liturgy.
The study of these works, which date from the Middle Ages to the early Renaissance, was entrusted to Gaudenz Freuler, professor of art history at the University of Zurich and a specialist in medieval and Renaissance Italian art and the history of miniatures - who meticulously prepared the critical entries, reconstructing the origins and kinships among the miniatures, identifying their iconography and contents, describing the styles and determining their attributions.
Among the most sensational finds among the splendid miniatures gathered here is the discovery of a page attributed to the hand of the young Fra Angelico.
Along with a critical essay by the author, the book contains an introduction by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi and an essay by Christopher de Hamel, who offers a free and unusual reading of these miniatures through an imagined liturgical calendar for a year, presenting the collection as a sort of splendid - and naturally unprecedented - "Book of Hours."