Leaf on vellum from a printed Book of Hours.

Book of Hours leaf, printed by Thielman Kerver* in 1507. It is printed on vellum in black and red with many initials hand painted in red, blue and gold.
The first proper text in a Book of Hours is a series of Gospel Lessons by the four evangelists. The First Lesson is from John [ 1:1-14 ]: In principio erat verbu & verbum erat apud deum & deus erat verbum. These words you find on the recto of this leaf. On the verso is the rest of the text.
Very often there is an image of John's portrait, writing his gospel, but here we see his torture: he is boiled in oil! On the left of the picture we see Emperor Domitian directing the torture and at the bottom is a servant blowing the fire with bellows. Miraculously the evangelist survives the experience. Around the image are architectural borders.
*The firm of Thielman Kerver is best known for its lovely printed Books of Hours, many of which include hand-painted miniatures and initial letters. Thielman Kerver, who was one of France's most prolific printers of such books, began printing Books of Hours in 1497, and continued until his death in 1522. At this time, his widow, Iolande Bonhomme, took over the firm, and continued to produce liturgical books of different types until 1556. Brunet notes that even though Kerver printed many different Books of Hours, his work is less common than that of his colleagues, Simon Vostre and the Hardouins. Brunet suspects that is because fewer copies on vellum were printed, and paper copies were destroyed. This may also account for the rarity of the present leaf.
On the recto is full page metal cut of the prophet Samuel anointing the shepherd boy David to be the future king of Israel. Next to the text on the verso are two pictures from the Apocalyps with the captions.