Digital Horae is a research database, an image based virtual research environment and an academic tutorial, presenting French Printed Books of Hours (Horae) of the 15th and early 16th centuries.

The Digital Library and Print Database have been developed as a tutorial for students and a resource for scholars in a variety of disciplines. Introductions and tutorials make it accessible also for a wider public.

The use of Digital Horae is currently passwort protected. Students of the Freie Universität can use their university password. Other interested users can obtain a password by contacting the project management. The goal of the continuous cooperation with several institutions is to publish the project as an open access website.

The contents of Digital Horae (collections, tutorials, services, external links) and  are intended to be dynamic. Please note that Digital Horae remains under construction. As of today not all Horae copies and sets or biographical documents are complete and fully analyzed or linked. No guarantee can, in particular, be given for completeness and correctness of information obtained through external links.

 

CONTENT

The Project has an art historical focus on the large number of graphic image sets used to illustrate and decorate printed Horae. It analyses the development of the book layout and of graphic styles, relations to other artistic centers and other media and introduces artists and their oeuvres.

There are several access ways to browse the project:

The GUIDED TOUR is a tutorial introduction of the main topics of the project in form of a "short story of horae printing" which presents an examples of the cooperation of artists and publishers working in Paris for an international market.

 

The PROJECT OVERVIEW offers an image based access to the project's content collections and tutorials via a project diagramm and exemplary pages introducing

- the textual structure of printed Horae and its imagery

- the printing process and the protagonists

- the material components of printing

- the stylistic development of the decoration

START DATABASE offers access to the database via several database collections:

- complete or partial digital surrogates

- collections of graphic sets

- lists of artists, printers and editors

- A timeline of early printing

- Tutorials presenting research subjects and introductions

 

Context links allow the user to switch from one access way to the other

Conditions for use of the Digital Horae website