Medieval Mindscapes is a manuscript exhibition that explores the ways books of hours used innovative visual strategies to engage the imagination of the user through immediate, immersive experiences. Curated from the Walters’ renowned collection of rare books and manuscripts, the display features 22 works and is on view on Level 3 of the museum’s Centre Street building.

Books of hours contained daily prayers, and their images provided an opportunity for intimate interactions with art in service of the user’s Christian faith in medieval Europe. These books helped those that engaged with them to build a private devotional world by encouraging imaginative interaction with the scenes depicted in their personalized, portable manuscripts. Some books were embedded with custom portraits of their owners to encourage the user to picture themselves in the moments included, while others used visual illusions in the margins to help the user discern the interplay between their physical reality and the spiritual world.

Works on view include three fifteenth-century books of hours that originated in Belgium. The first depicts the female patron who commissioned and owned it in an image of the Annunciation, where an angel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would miraculously give birth to the son of God. In the scene, the owner has cast herself as the main character with clothing and posture that suggest she is aspiring to follow Mary’s virtuous example, which may also suggest her hope for fertility. In the second image, a remarkably lifelike rosary made of gold, coral, and pearl wraps around the text, suggesting that its owner might have held similar prayer beads while engaging in his private devotion. A smiling, fleshy skeleton is depicted in the third picture, offering an unexpectedly chilling presence. Likely a personification of death, the skeleton seems eerily aware of the viewer, confronting them with a mirror and compelling them to contemplate their fate by imagining themselves in its reflection.

The Walters Art Museum’s collection of rare books and manuscripts chronicles the art of the book over more than 2,000 years from ancient to modern times through almost a thousand illuminated manuscripts, over 1,300 of the first printed books (ca. 1455–1500), and an important collection of nearly 2,000 rare post-1500 tomes. The manuscripts collection features works from across the globe, including deluxe Gospel books from Armenia, Ethiopia, Byzantium, and Ottonian Germany, French and Flemish books of hours, as well as masterpieces of Safavid, Mughal and Ottoman manuscript illumination. The printed book collection includes important first printed editions of ancient texts by great thinkers such as Aristotle and Euclid, a diary written by Napoleon, and an intricate binding crafted by Tiffany.

Medieval Mindscapes is curated by Lauren Maceross, Zanvyl Krieger Curatorial Fellow, Rare Books and Manuscripts.