The removing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Belles Heures from its binding in 2003 and subsequent restoration offered an unparalleled opportunity to study anew this remarkable manuscript. The surge of publications that followed include Eberhard König's commentary to the facsimile published by Faksimile Verlag Luzern, an exhibition held in Nijmegen in 2005 (which was accompanied by a superb scholarly conference), as well as the subject of this review, Timothy Husband's The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry.

As Husband acknowledges in his preface, his monograph is heavily indebted to both Millard Meiss and to the scholarly insights that emerged at Nijmegen, the catalog for which he contributed an essay introducing many of the ideas that he expands upon here. Similarly, conservator Margaret Lawson's excellent essay complements the findings she published in the Nijmegen catalog. Nonetheless, this monograph remains a valuable contribution, not the least of which for the insights that only years of close study in a laboratory setting can offer.

Husband begins by situating the manuscript within Jean de Berry's collection and pattern of taste, briefly surveying his patronage of architectural projects, sculpture, tapestry, joyaux, gems, étrennes, and manuscripts. He then reviews the principal scholarship and documentary evidence for the Limbourg brothers' lives and activities, with particular reference to the Belles Heures. Of particular interest is the description of the manuscript's codicological structure and analyses of its formatting, border, and initial decoration and sequence of production. This, combined with the technical evidence offered by Lawson and Husband's wise choice not to distinguish each brother's contribution, offers a welcome view of the manuscript as a profoundly collaborative product.

The majority of the monograph is comprised of detailed descriptions of all the miniatures, accompanied by transcriptions and translation of many of the rubrics, and excellent full-scale reproductions. Although engaging and insightful, most of this commentary, along with the subsequent chapter on the Limbourgs' sources and influences, does not offer much in the way of new discoveries. Husband is at his most penetrating in his chapter summarizing the Limbourgs' artistic achievement, particularly in regards to their assimilation of Trecento and Parisian styles, which, he argues, allowed the brothers to transform the traditional miniature cycle into an integrated visual narrative sequence. Husband further stresses the distinctiveness of this manuscript, claiming its principal function was not devotional but was instead a kind of laboratory for cultivating the talent of these young artists. His insistence on artistic development as modified by codicological and technical evidence results in some circular reasoning, as for example when he states that a better understanding of the sequence of production enables tracking of the Limbourg brothers' stylistic and compositional advances, upon recognition of which the order of production can be better deduced (75). Indeed, Husband's emphatically formalist approach is paradoxically both the strongest and the most problematic aspect of the book. Contemporary viewing practices at the Valois court — a topic that has received extended study from Anne D. Hedeman and Claire Richter Sherman among others — are not discussed, even though these must have impacted the Limbourgs' treatment of narrative. Another question that arises is the extent to which these practices might have intersected with the duke's devotional needs, although this aspect of his life, while hinted at, is never really explored. Finally, the assumption that the Limbourgs were the generators of the principal iconographic innovations is problematic, particularly given the young age at which the artists came into the duke's employ. The discrepancies in the St. Catherine cycle, for example, may indeed have been due to a rush to complete the manuscript so as to move on to the Très Riches Heures; however, some may be explained by the visual models the Limbourgs employed, while others might have resulted from the input of an advisor or librairien who communicated to the artists through ambiguous written instructions of a type that has been associated with other manuscripts made for patrons in the Valois courtly circle. These are questions that underscore the need for further research on this fascinating manuscript, which shall surely be sparked by this beautifully produced book.