The Master of the Prayer Books of around 1500 was a Flemish painter of illuminated manuscripts and miniatures active in Bruges from about 1485 until around 1520. His name is derived from a collection of devotional manuscripts from the same artist dating to about the start of the 16th century. The name notwithstanding, the Master is best known for the work he did painting secular images, incorporating details from daily life in a number of his original narratives. His interest in courtly life, as well as the daily activities of the lower classes, may be seen as well in his paintings for calendars. Unlike other artists of his time, he didn't show interest in painting landscapes. His exceptional Roman de la Rose British Library Harley MS 4425 has 92 large and high quality miniatures, with a date around 1500.
Famous quotes containing the words master of, master, prayer and/or books:
“Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything—except his own nature.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a part as it may please the master to assign you, for a long time or for a little as he may choose. And if he will you to take the part of a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen, then may you act that part with grace! For to act well the part that is allotted to us, that indeed is ours to do, but to choose it is another’s.”
—Epictetus (c. 55–135 B.C.)
“... it was religion that saved me. Our ugly church and parochial school provided me with my only aesthetic outlet, in the words of the Mass and the litanies and the old Latin hymns, in the Easter lilies around the altar, rosaries, ornamented prayer books, votive lamps, holy cards stamped in gold and decorated with flower wreaths and a saint’s picture.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place.”
—Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)