reviews.indd


Book Reviews 201 

archival work, especially for institutions 
that deal with personal primary sources, 
regardless of their format. As copyright 
law has changed over the last century, 
librarians and archivists have frequently 
reexamined how we approach the acces-
sibility of items. 

The 1976 Copyright Act changed the 
formal requirement for registering and ob-
taining ownership to the more immediate 
process of having it conferred automati-
cally as it takes on a “fixed form.” For ar-
chives, this means that every lett er, diary, 
poem, essay, or any original work has to be 
treated as if it carries a copyright, regard-
less of whether it has ever been published. 
While donation forms are used to offset 
the potential problems from such rights, 
archives must still exercise caution. 

As Behrnd-Klodt illustrates during 
an in-depth discussion of “Fair Use” 
(a widely used shield for libraries and 
archives), the actual protection provided 
is often tenuous and requires a substan-
tial amount of diligence on the part of 
the archivist. In fact, each of these final 
chapters acts to reinforce the practices 
and procedures that are outlined in earlier 
chapters of the book. 

Ultimately, Navigating Legal Issues in 
Archives contains a thorough examination 
of the kind of issues archivists need to 
examine for their individual institutions. 
While it would serve as an excellent in-
troduction to anyone who is new to the 
profession and concerned about access is-
sues, its bullet-pointed summaries, chap-
tered sections, and sample forms make it 
equally valuable as a permanent reference 
source.—Timothy Hensley, Virginia Holo-
caust Museum, Richmond, Virginia. 

Antoine de Schryver. The Prayer Book of 
Charles the Bold: A Study of a Flemish 
Masterpiece from the Burgundian Court. 
Transl. Jessica Berenbeim. Los Angeles: 
The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008. 310p. 
cloth, $60 (ISBN 9780892369430). LC 
2008-924691. 

Anyone possessing even a passing 
familiarity with the many difficulties 

and complexities inherent in studying 
medieval manuscripts can easily ap-
preciate both how and why a scholar 
might devote a lifetime to investigating 
a single book. When studying a text 
produced at such a distant temporal 
remove and in such a diff erent cultural 
milieu as the Middle Ages, researchers 
face a number of uncertainties related to 
its significance and the circumstances of 
its production. For instance, questions of 
responsibility arise: Who commissioned 
the work, and who actually executed its 
calligraphy and illustrations? Problems 
of interpretation also emerge, such as 
deciphering how the book’s textual and 
graphical components interact with and 
complement each other; determining the 
relationship between the manuscript’s 
composite and often heterogeneous por-
tions; and ascertaining how the book fits 
into the wider artistic, social, and cultural 
contexts of its time. Antoine de Schryver, 
one of the foremost experts in southern 
Netherlandish manuscript illumination 
and former professor of art history at the 
University of Ghent, answers all of these 
questions—and more—in this well-ar-
gued and thoroughly researched volume 
on the history of a late–fifteenth-century 
illuminated prayer book produced for 
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy 
(1433–77). The product of over fift y years 
of scholarly dedication and eff ort, Profes-
sor de Schryver’s examination of this de-
votional book offers readers a fascinating 
and remarkably informative glimpse into 
the world of manuscript patronage and 
production in the late–fifteenth-century 
Burgundian court. 

The study’s foundation is de Schryver’s 
discovery of official account rolls for the 
ducal court of Charles the Bold covering 
the years 1467–77 in which he uncovered 
two entries recording payments made to 
cover the production of a lavish devotion-
al book. The first, dated January 1469, is a 
record of payment to one Nicolas Spierinc 
for writing “certain prayers,” while the 
second, dated August 1469, records pay-
ment made to one Lieven van Lathem 



202 College & Research Libraries 

for executing twenty-five miniatures and 
other border decorations, vignett es, and 
illuminated initials. These accounts not 
only allow de Schryver confi dently to as-
cribe the prayer book’s production to two 
“figures of the very first rank of illumi-
nated manuscript production in Flanders 
and Brabant during the second half of the 
fifteenth century,” they also enable us to 
place the manuscript in the wider context 
of Flemish book arts as a whole. 

The book’s first two chapters of-
fer a brief overview of the manuscript 
and its contents, providing convincing 
evidence not just for Charles the Bold’s 
commissioning of the piece, but also for 
four distinct phases in the prayer book’s 
production. The first phase consisted 
of Spierinc’s calligraphic work on the 
book’s text, while the second phase cen-
tered on the illuminations of what de 
Schryver calls the “documented core” 
of the book: the twenty-fi ve miniatures, 
their accompanying full borders, and the 
eighty-eight smaller borders executed by 
van Lathem and his atelier accounted for 
in the payment record of August 1469. 
The third phase involved van Lathem’s 
illumination of prayers illustrated with 
devotional diptychs, and the fourth phase 
was the later addition to the manuscript 
of a new illuminated text, “The Little 
Hours of the Cross,” not executed by van 
Lathem. Detailed notes supplement this 
discussion, providing useful background 
information about Flemish manuscript 
production, including the prices illumina-
tors and scribes charged for their work 
and how payment for such services was 
determined, and definitions of some of 
the specialized terminology used in book 
production of the period. 

Chapters 3 and 4 move away from this 
general description of the manuscript 
itself to consider in detail the lives of van 
Lathem (c.1438–93), the illuminator, and 
Spierinc (fl. 1455–99), the calligrapher. 
Although complete biographical informa-
tion for each is unavailable, de Schryver 
pieces together surviving documentary 
evidence—predominantly legal records 

March 2009 

related to lawsuits, real estate, annui-
ties, and questions of inheritance, and 
records detailing membership in and 
interactions with professional associa-
tions and guilds—to provide substantial 
accounts of each man’s life. Additionally, 
he augments this concrete data with dis-
cussions of various projects van Lathem 
and Spierinc executed individually and in 
cooperation with other artists. Both men 
emerge as influential master craftsmen 
well connected at the Burgundian court 
and located firmly at the heart of illumina-
tion, calligraphy, and bookmaking in the 
artistic circles of the late-medieval Low 
Countries. 

The remainder of the book analyzes 
in depth Charles the Bold’s prayer book 
itself. Chapter 5 describes the cadels, ara-
besques, and illustrative motifs Spierinc 
used to adorn the book’s text pages, pro-
viding valuable insight into his specific 
calligraphic techniques and comparing 
his own work to model books and other 
devotional texts of the period. Chapters 
6–8 cover van Lathem’s illuminations, 
supplying descriptive overviews of all 
twenty-five miniatures, the three devo-
tional diptychs, and their accompanying 
illustrated borders. The author examines 
each illustration’s stylistic qualities, in-
cluding their overall composition and 
van Lathem’s skillful use of fi gures, color, 
landscape, and architectural space. de 
Schryver also considers many of van 
Lathem’s possible infl uences, analyzing 
the master illuminator’s work on Duke 
Charles’s prayer book alongside other 
famous Flemish manuscripts like the 
famous Prayer Book of Philip the Good, 
the Sachsenheim Hours, and the Hours of 
Catherine of Cleves, and the works of con-
temporary artists such as the van Eycks, 
Roger van den Weyden, Dirk Bouts, and 
others. Chapter 9 steps away from van 
Lathem’s contributions to the manuscript 
to discuss the miniatures included in “The 
Little Hours of the Cross,” a later addition 
to the prayer book probably executed 
by one of van Lathem’s assistants and 
bound in with the original text between 



1472 and 1475. The final chapter considers 
the production process Spierinc and van 
Lathem followed in creating the prayer 
book’s “documented core,” with discus-
sions of the text’s elaborate mise-en-page, 
or layout; the patterns of rubrication, line 
fillers, and partial borders; and the the-
matic interplay between illustration and 
text. Throughout the chapter, de Schryver 
addresses the uncertainties involved 
in definitively assigning responsibility 
for the execution of calligraphic and il-
lustrative elements in a work that was 
the product of multiple craftsmen. In the 
end, however, he succeeds in supporting 
his original attribution of the illumina-
tion and scribal work to van Lathem and 
Spierinc, respectively, along with associ-
ates from their ateliers working in similar 
and complementary styles. 

Rounding out the book are fi ve ap-
pendices. The first provides excerpts 
from the duke’s account rolls, including 
the entries recording the duke’s payment 
to Spierinc and van Lathem, as well as 
interesting items documenting some of 
the duke’s other manuscript commissions. 
The second, third, and fourth appendices 
offer a full codicological description of 
the prayer book (including a useful dia-
gram of the manuscript’s quire structure 
and the placement of its miniatures); a 
description of the final thirty-four folios 
of the book representing a much later 
addition to the manuscript executed for 
another owner long after the duke’s death; 
and a detailed account of the manuscript’s 
binding. The final appendix considers the 
history of the manuscript after the duke’s 
death and attempts to trace its provenance 
through the complex political and legal 
battles of the late-fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries, its later owners in subsequent 
centuries, and its eventual purchase by 
the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1989. Further 
supplementing the book are forty-six 
color reproductions of the manuscript’s 
miniatures and an additional 124 black-
and-white illustrations that help place the 
prayer book within the wider context of 
late-medieval Flemish art. 

Book Reviews 203 

Thoroughly researched and extremely 
readable, this book nevertheless suffers 
from a number of editorial lapses. The 
majority are simply errors in spelling, 
although occasionally words are omitted 
or transposed; and, in one particularly 
important case at the beginning of the 
codicological description in Appendix 2, 
a mistake in numbering the manuscript’s 
folios introduces unnecessary confusion. 
Most of these errors are likely the result 
of the author’s failing health and unfortu-
nate death during the final preparation of 
the text and the publisher’s rush to get the 
book into print “as quickly as possible,” 
and, although bothersome, do not detract 
from the overall quality of de Schryver’s 
scholarship. 

Whether addressing specifi c questions 
about the prayer book’s creators and 
contents or more general issues related to 
the wider historical and artistic contexts 
of the late-fifteenth century Netherlands, 
de Schryver’s study is a model of codi-
cological, art historical, and provenance 
research. Although primarily intended for 
art historians and medieval specialists, 
this volume has much to teach librarians 
and book historians about manuscript 
production in the later Middle Ages and 
how to deal with the complexities and 
difficulties involved in studying me-
dieval books.—Eric Johnson, Ohio State 
University. 

Amnon Kabatchnik. Sherlock Holmes on 
the Stage: A Chronological Encyclopedia 
of Plays Featuring the Great Detective. 
Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2008. 
208p. alk. paper. Cloth, $55 (ISBN 
9780810861251). LC 2008-000118. 

Unexpectedly, Amnon Kabatchnik’s En-
cyclopedia is a page-turner. The author, a 
director and a professor of theater, hav-
ing held positions at SUNY Binghamton, 
Stanford University, Ohio State University, 
Florida State University, and Elmira Col-
lege, has turned the work of synopsis into 
the work of lively reportage as he recounts 
the plots and highlights the signifi cant fea-
tures of the plays featuring Sherlock Hol-