Franco Cosimo Panini - Visconti Book of Hours

The Visconti Office (or Visconti Book of Hours) refers to an exceptionally rich two-volume Book of Hours, whose illuminations were executed at different times by two very different artists. The first, Giovannino de' Grassi, and several collaborators painted the first pages for Gian Galeazzo Visconti. After his death in 1402, the work was interrupted, only to be resumed by Belbello da Pavia when Gian Galeazzo's son, Filippo Maria, became duke in 1412. In his later years, Gian Galeazzo had established Pavia and Milan as two of Europe's leading centers for the production of illuminated manuscripts, creating a truly unique series of splendid illustrated books dedicated to plants, animals, medicine, and the seasons. While the scribe who compiled the text of the prayer book signed his name, Brother Amadeo, the illuminators, as was typical of the time, remain anonymous, and only external evidence suggests that the drawings in the first part of the manuscript are due to the imagination of Giovannin or de' Grassi. The other great illuminator, who illustrated the second part of the Book of Hours, is Belbello da Pavia. Most of Belbello's miniatures in the Visconti Book of Hours belong to the initial phase of his artistic development, which evolved from a compact style, rich in detail and richness, to the more relaxed and chromatically bold language of the Mantua Missal.

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