The Boucicaut workshop and the commercial production of Books of Hours in early fifteenth-century Paris

This dissertation is a study of the full range of Books of Hours produced by one of the most prolific workshops of illuminators active in Paris in the first decades of the fifteenth century, known today only as the "Boucicaut Master" and his workshop. There are more than fifty-seven Books of Hours with miniatures in the highly characteristic Boucicaut style. My study, based on the first-hand observation of more than thirty of these manuscripts as well as other documentary evidence related to the Parisian book trade, proposes a paradigm for the model of production of illuminated Books of Hours.;The Boucicaut artists were integral members of the long-standing and well-established Parisian manuscript industry, and they operated as an independent workshop with no sustained connections to any one court. The workshop was comprised of several individuals who worked in a closely collaborative method of production that limits the extent to which we can distinguish individual members. The Boucicaut illuminators built a successful commercial enterprise on the development of a highly consistent and recognizable version of the illuminated Book of Hours that could be adapted to meet the needs of a diverse clientele. Each manuscript was commissioned and designed for a specific individual, and the manuscripts were personalized to the extent that the status and personalities of some of the unnamed patrons can be determined, a group including Parisian and foreign, lay and clerical, male and female patrons who commissioned a range of texts, simplified or sophisticated, sparsely or lavishly illuminated.;The commercial production of illuminated Books of Hours provided unique artistic opportunities for Parisian illuminators. For Boucicaut illuminators, the large-scale production of Books of Hours resulted not in mediocrity or rote copying, but in sophisticated artistic experimentation and novel interpretations of familiar narratives. Collaboration with other Parisian illuminators was common as well, and Boucicaut illuminators developed long-term partnerships with several other major workshops.