This miniature is by one of the greatest Flemish artists, Simon Marmion, who excelled in both illumination and panel painting. He based himself in Valenciennes and was active from the late 1450s till his death in 1489, executing commissions for the highly refined tastes of the court of Burgundy. This miniature exemplifies Marmion's subtle palette and his delicate figures with their gentle features and restrained gestures. Below the miniature is a border of strewn flowers, fruit, and even a fly. Such trompe-l'oeil borders will become a popular feature of late fifteenth-century and sixteenth-century Flemish manuscripts. Painted around 1480, this manuscript reveals Marmion to be an early master of these foliate marvels. The manuscript, however, was written and its textual borders painted in northern France a few years before. Marmion, commissioned to complete the book, expanded his miniatures beyond the customary area of the text block, allowing them and the borders below to fill out nearly all the available vellum surface to the very edges of the folios.

Hours for Rome use, Northern France and Belgium, c. 1480 (New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.6, f. 57v).

The Master of the Harvard Hannibal is named after his miniature of the Coronation of Hannibal in a French translation of Livy's Roman History now at Harvard University (Houghton Library, MS Richardson 32). Active from about 1410 to 1430, the Hannibal Master began his career in the workshop of the Boucicaut Master. The English occupation of Paris in 1420 made much business evaporate, and the Hannibal Master, as did a number of illuminators, left the French capital and moved north to French Flanders. The artist had a highly decorative style, with intense areas of local color.

Hours for Paris use. France, Paris, c. 1417 (New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.455, f. 84v)