Rothschild Prayerbook

The Rothschild Prayerbook or Rothschild Hours (both titles are used for other books), is an important Flemish illuminated manuscript book of hours, compiled c. 1500–20 by a number of artists. It has 254 folios, with a page size of 228 × 160 mm. It was once in the Austrian National Library in Vienna as Codex Vindobonensis S.N. 2844. Since its sale in 1999 it has held the world record price at auction for an illuminated manuscript. In 2014 it was purchased by Australian businessman Kerry Stokes from Christie's New York and is on display in the National Library of Australia.

It contains the work of several leading miniaturists of the final flowering of the Ghent-Bruges school of Flemish illumination, who also co-operated on the Grimani Breviary, the Spinola Hours (Malibu) and other major manuscripts of these years. Most of the sixty-seven large miniatures are by the "Master of the First Prayerbook of Maximilian", an older artist, and Gerard Horenbout or the Master of James IV of Scotland (these being two names probably for the same artist). Other miniatures are by Gerard David, better known as a panel painter, or a pupil working in his style, with two miniatures by Simon Bening, and other work by further masters.

There are wide borders, many with flowers and other objects and drolleries, and another group with trompe l'oeil imitations of bronzes. Other borders frame the miniature with illusionistically painted wooden tracery. Some pages follow the fashion of showing one scene as a framed inset within another larger one, In total 140 pages, over half of the whole book, have significant decoration outside the text. The calendar has scenes of the Labours of the Months at the bottom of the pages. As with other very lavishly illuminated manuscripts, it was probably worked on over a long period.

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