I found the Office of the Dead section of the Book of Hours to be very interesting. Death is a subject that is usually dark and gloomy, but the portrayal of death in many of the images is filled with bright colors in combination with darker themes of death, portrayed by a sickly man lying in bed being prayed for in Plate 73, a burial and multiple skulls in Plate 74, and a skeleton holding a scythe surrounded by a border of snakes and skulls. This contrast between light and dark imagery shows the solemnity of death and the hope of heaven. They seem to serve as both a reminder of the inevitable while still working to inspire hope in the viewer with bright color and images of angels and the church. They are each intricately painted, and the detail of these pages is amazing. Plate 75 especially stands out with its variety of images. The decorated initial and other text is coupled with an image of skeletons approaching three men on scared horses. This image and the text is framed within a larger image of a man digging a grave and other men praying in a graveyard. Lastly, two more characters are seen sitting in the trees growing up around the text. The complexity and detail put into such a small image is quite impressive, especially since each of these images was handmade and each page has its own style.
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I found the Office of the Dead interesting too. I am not sure of the exact time period because I’m not well versed in Christian religious art, but it used to be very common to have a type of “momento mori” or death reminder. Basically that means that the person, when seeing the image, was reminded of the inevitability of death and to live in such a way to prepare them for the afterlife- a huge concern in medieval times.
I agree that the vibrant colors used to depict the funerary rites seem at odds with the solemnity we typically associate with death. However, death in the Middle Ages was perhaps more prevalent and noticeable. since life expectancy was not nearly as long as it is today; furthermore, the religious convictions that people held would have perhaps made death seem more an object of hopeful spiritual contemplation than of dread. But what I think is really intriguing is the contrast between the Office of the Dead and the Litany. The depiction of the Litany seems much more sorrowful- the colors are drab, there are no miniatures or only restrained illustrations to accompany the text. It seems to me that the Litany moreso than the Offices of the Dead represents dolor or perhaps even fear- it is described as a “cry for help.” Perhaps the reality of living in sin, and the meditation thereon that the Book of Hours was meant to provoke through visually sumptuous illustration, was felt more painfully than the inevitability of death, and was thus treated differently artistically than any other section of the Book of Hours.