The Beatty Rosarium

Among the treasures of the Chester Beatty Library is the Beatty Rosarium (MS W.99), which is catalogued as a small illuminated codex Rosarium (12.4cm x8.4cm) and is a manuscript on parchment with 106 pages. This Rosary prayer book made in Bruges c 1540-45, is decorated with thirty-three full page miniatures, attributed to the prominent master of European manuscript painting, Simon Bening (ca. 1483-1561) (fig.1.). It is richly illustrated with the highest level of craftsmanship in miniature illumination and considered a crowning monument at end the long period of the decorated book in Western Europe. Each of its full-page miniatures was originally captured in vivid colours and designed to appear opposite a prayer to the Virgin Mary. This arrangement facilitated meditation on the proximate prayer and its corresponding image and was thus part of personal devotion. This collection of divine images illustrates the life of the Virgin and the Passion of Christ and except for a single miniature added later, the renowned miniaturist Simon Bening is associated with the execution of each of these images as one of his final surviving masterpieces.