Head of Christ, wearing Crown of Thorns, leaf from a Book of Hours

An image of Illuminated Manuscript. Cutting. Leaf from a Book of Hours. Chierico. Francesco di Antonio del (Italian). Production Place: Italy, Florence. Parchment, gold, 130 x 90 mm (70 x 47 mm), 13 long lines ruled in ink, circa 1470 to circa 1484.
CONTENTS: Beginning of the Short Hours of the Cross, on reverse (original recto) end of a collect, pie creditor reclinatus fuisti cuius animam tue mortis gladius pertransibat…ut benefitio tue mortis de victis et hostibus ab instantibus malis et a morte perpetua liberemur. Qui vivus etc. Amen. V[ersiculum] Benedicamus domino. R[esponsio] Deo gratias. DECORATION: Historiated initial in pink or blue on gold ground, with acanthus extensions and full floral borders containing putti, birds, vases, gold crosses and scenes: Short Hours of the Cross, [D, 8 ll.] Head of Christ, cross-nimbed and wearing Crown of Thorns, with the Betrayal in a roundel in lower border. ORNAMENTATION: Blue penwork initial [V, 2 ll.] with red pen-flourished infill and extension for Psalm 94 (MS 257d verso); red or blue one-line penwork initials.

Terms of use

The low-resolution images published on this Website are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY-NC-ND). For more details: Fitzwilliam Terms of Use

This licence does not include any images of works that are still in copyright. Artistic copyright extends from the life of the artist to 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the artist died.

Download this image

For further information on use of images or to license a high resolution version, please contact our image library who can discuss terms and fees.

Illuminated Manuscript. Cutting. Leaf from a Book of Hours. Chierico. Francesco di Antonio del (Italian). Production Place: Italy, Florence. Parchment, gold, 130 x 90 mm (70 x 47 mm), 13 long lines ruled in ink, circa 1470 to circa 1484. CONTENTS: Beginning of the Short Hours of the Cross, on reverse (original recto) end of a collect, pie creditor reclinatus fuisti cuius animam tue mortis gladius pertransibat…ut benefitio tue mortis de victis et hostibus ab instantibus malis et a morte perpetua liberemur. Qui vivus etc. Amen. V[ersiculum] Benedicamus domino. R[esponsio] Deo gratias. DECORATION: Historiated initial in pink or blue on gold ground, with acanthus extensions and full floral borders containing putti, birds, vases, gold crosses and scenes: Short Hours of the Cross, [D, 8 ll.] Head of Christ, cross-nimbed and wearing Crown of Thorns, with the Betrayal in a roundel in lower border. ORNAMENTATION: Blue penwork initial [V, 2 ll.] with red pen-flourished infill and extension for Psalm 94 (MS 257d verso); red or blue one-line penwork initials.

Image data

Accession Number: MS 257d
Photograph copyright © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Photographer name: Andrew Morris
Image height: 1412 pixels
Image width: 1024 pixels
Processed with: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows
Filesize: 352.32kB

Key words

15th Century _WF_AdOK _WF_KWD _WF_OPAC _WF_OPAC_pending acanthus betray betrayal of Christ biblical bleeding blood of Christ book of hours border Christ Christianity crown of thorns cutting decorative initial Easter Fitz_MSPB Florentine School foliage foliate Francesco di Antonio del Chierico gold leaf halo historiated initial hours Hours of the Cross illuminated illumination inhabited initial initial Italian Jesus manuscript manuscript leaf manuscript leaves margin marginalia miniature New Testament nimbus parchment Passion of Christ penwork Quattrocento religion religious Renaissance roundel script texts

Citation for print

This page can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:


            The Fitzwilliam Museum (2025)
            "Head of Christ, wearing Crown of Thorns, leaf from a Book of Hours"
            Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/image/media-2937204879 Accessed: 2025-12-05 15:53:29

Citation for Wikipedia

To cite this page on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:


            {{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/image/media-2937204879
            |title=Head of Christ, wearing Crown of Thorns, leaf from a Book of Hours
            |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2025-12-05 15:53:29|publisher=The
            University of Cambridge}}

API call for this record

To call these data via our API (remember this needs to be authenticated) you can use this code snippet:

https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/api/v1/images/media-2937204879

Bootstrap HTML code for reuse

To use this as a simple code embed, copy this string:

<div class="text-center">
    <figure class="figure">
        <img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/727/687/large_MS_257d_dc1.jpg"
        alt="Leaf from a Book of Hours"
        class="img-fluid" />
        <figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Head of Christ, wearing Crown of Thorns, leaf from a Book of Hours</figcaption>
    </figure>
</div>