The prayer book is a small but precious volume, handmade on parchment and richly decorated with miniatures, borders and initials in tempera and gold. This unique work once belonged to Queen Bona Sforza.

A Short History of the Prayer Book

The prayer book was produced in sixteenth-century Kraków, but its existence was not recorded in Polish writing until the nineteenth century. Jan Tadeusz Lubomirski, prince, social activist, historian and encyclopaedist, described it in an article published in the periodical “Biblioteka Warszawska” in 1856. It is now held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford under the title “Godzinki królowej Bony” (“Book of Hours of Queen Bona”). Since two private prayer books belonging to the queen have survived, it is referred to as “Prayer Book of Queen Bona II” in Polish scholarship. This much we know for certain about the hidden life of this artefact; but let us take it one step at a time.

 

Sigismund the Old’s Wedding Gift to His Wife

Bona Sforza d’Aragona (1494–1557), daughter of a Milanese duke and a Neapolitan royal house, was groomed from childhood to be a future ruler. An ambitious aristocrat, she received a careful education. She was literate, fluent in Latin and Spanish and acquired knowledge of state administration, law, mathematics, history and theology. She played several instruments and loved horse riding and hunting.
In 1518, Bona Sforza married the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, Sigismund I, known as the Old. For her the king commissioned an elaborate gift. Handwritten in Latin and richly illustrated, the prayer book, containing the text of the Hours (intercessory prayers), was made on parchment. It is adorned with painted decoration and gilding, including ornate initials and borders and fifteen full-page miniatures with scenes from the Bible. The volume comprises 258 folios (271 pages) and measures only 130 × 114 mm. The prayer book survives in a single copy.

Stanisław Samostrzelnik: The Creator of Queen Bona’s Prayer Book

The prayer book must have delighted its well-educated owner. The mastermind behind such elaborate commissions was a monk-painter, the highly regarded illuminator Stanisław Samostrzelnik (c. 1490–1541), who came from a bourgeois Kraków family. As a teenager, he joined the Cistercian Order.
The first documented reference to the painter dates from about 1506, when Samostrzelnik was about sixteen years old: he is described as pictor de Mogila, a painter in the Cistercian monastery at Mogiła near Kraków. There, he engaged in illumination, that is, the painted illustration of books, as well as mural painting. He proved exceptionally talented, and his growing fame soon won him a wealthy patron and permission to live outside the monastery. He even established an atelier in Kraków, for he had so many commissions for handwritten and richly illustrated books that he had to employ assistants. At first, he worked for high-ranking officials and later for the king.

The Works of Stanisław Samostrzelnik 

The painting of Stanisław Samostrzelnik is unrivalled in Renaissance Poland, and the manuscript for Queen Bona is regarded as the finest work of the Cistercian from Mogiła; three other masterpieces of prayer-book illumination by Samostrzelnik are also known. He gives biblical events a joyful, festive character, drawing the viewer into a colourful, fairy-tale world that combines lyricism with a somewhat naive splendour.
His style is characterised by great decorativeness, a love of detail and vivid, contrasting colours. Looking at the miniatures, one can see that the artist was following developments in the art world. In some compositions, one can find not only inspiration from the prints of his contemporaries among the great masters, such as Albrecht Dürer or Hans Baldung Grien, but also striking innovation in the depiction of popular biblical themes.
The artist drew boldly on the achievements of the Renaissance: he set his scenes in landscapes rendered with great sensitivity to nature and with the virtuosity of a landscape painter, and he depicted figures in an almost portrait-like manner, without excessive idealisation, dressed in contemporary costume. Finally, his signature bears witness to the artist’s growing stature in the Renaissance, even though he was a humble monk.

Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary: A Miniature from the Prayer Book

The scene is set in an interior with Renaissance decoration, with a vast landscape visible outside the window. The Archangel Gabriel is drawing back a curtain above the kneeling Mary. On the step of the prie-dieu are the painter’s signature and the date “S.C.f.Ao.MDXXVII”. The Latin abbreviation reads as “Stanislaus Claratumbensis fecit Anno 1527”.
The bordure, or frame, is filled with a floral arabesque on a gold ground, and at the bottom, set in a medallion and supported by putti, is the quartered shield of Queen Bona’s arms, bearing the arms of the Sforzas and the eagles of the Visconti, emblems of the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples, together with the arms of Poland and Lithuania.
There is no dedication or ownership inscription in the prayer book, but it unquestionably belonged to the queen. This is evidenced by Bona’s name, written twice in the text of one of the prayers and, above all, by her coats of arms, visible at the bottom of twelve of the fifteen miniatures. It is clear that these devices were intended to emphasise Bona’s descent from a powerful royal family, her rights as heir to the Italian principalities and her present position: queen of Poland and grand duchess of Lithuania.

Queen Bona’s Prayer Book: Further History 

Queen Bona went down in history as an ambitious ruler with a difficult character, quarrelling even with her own son. A conflict with Sigismund Augustus (1520–1572), by then already king (Sigismund the Old died in 1548), influenced Bona’s decision to return to her hereditary duchy of Bari and Rossano in Italy, where she died on 19 November 1557, poisoned by her trusted courtier John Lawrence Pappacoda.
What happened to the prayer book? Most likely, the queen took it with her when she left Poland in 1556, and so it disappeared from the pages of history. It evidently remained in the hands of someone who knew its value and appreciated it. Despite the passage of centuries, it was preserved in excellent condition. The high quality of the materials from which it was made was not insignificant: a very durable writing material, such as parchment, and inks made from natural dyes.
After more than two hundred years, the manuscript entered the collection of the well-known London antiquary and bibliophile Francis Douce and, after his death, the Bodleian Library, the university library of Oxford. It has been kept there since 1834 under the shelfmark “Douce 40”.
In Poland, a facsimile edition of the prayer book was published in 2016 in the series “Libri Precationum Illuminati Poloniae Veteris”.