1 INTRODUCTION

Jean Pucelle's manuscript, The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux (1320s) from the Cloisters Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, presented a welcome challenge when it was decided to mount more than 40 conserved leaves in a variety of formats for the exhibition Prayerbook for a Queen: The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, for loan to the J. Paul Getty Museum and display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Commissioned by Charles IV, this treasured prayer book was a most precious gift for his cousin, bride, and queen, Jeanne d'Evreux.

The tempera and ink on vellum manuscript, disbound for conservation and facsimile photography, is exceedingly small (page size 6.2 � 8.9 cm [31/2 in. � 27/16 in.]). Composed of more than 200 folios, the manuscript includes 25 extraordinarily fine full-page miniature paintings in both color and grisaille and abundant, wonderfully fluid and facile depictions of all kinds of characters, animals, and life in the marginalia of the text and painted pages.

The spine folds of the leaves had been flattened during conservation treatment, and the pages were planar for matting.