A celebrated manuscript from the middle ages that inspired a Walt Disney castle but has been unseen by the public and scholars for more than 40 years will go on display in France this summer, The Guardian reports.
Pages from Les Tres Riches Heures (The Very Rich Hours)—an elaborately decorated prayer book from the 15th century—will be exhibited at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris, after a costly restoration. It has not been seen, even by historians and academics, since the 1980s.
Commissioned by John, the duke of Berry, brother of King Charles V of France, the 416-page manuscript is a “book of hours” recording prayers to be said at each canonical hour of the day, along with a calendar of church feasts and saints’ days.
It contains 131 complex miniatures, 300 decorated capital letters and border decorations created from expensive pigments and gold on delicate calfskin vellum pages.
The book was created by three Dutch brothers, Paul, Johan and Herman Limbourg, who worked in what is now known as International Gothic style that began in Burgundy and northern Italy and spread across western Europe, and is considered their greatest work.
When the brothers and the duke all died in 1416—possibly from the Black Death—the manuscript, unfinished and unbound, passed to Berry’s cousin, the duke of Anjou.
The book remained largely unknown until the late 19th and 20th centuries, when its pictures became a reference for the middle ages in the public imagination. The Sleeping Beauty castle at Disneyland Paris was partly inspired by images of châteaux from Les Tres Riches Heures.















