The two ‘house books’ [22] [23], which are manuscript collections containing professional or estate-related content, open up models of knowledge organisation in the transition to the early modern period. Due to their mostly detailed illustrations, they can be regarded as unique pictorial sources for everyday life in the late Middle Ages.

While the 'Wolfegger Hausbuch' is a compilation of practical knowledge from a wide variety of fields, created for the purposes of a noble household, the Nuremberg 'Hausbuch der Zwölfbrüderstiftung' (House Book of the Twelve Brothers Foundation) refers entirely to the world of urban craftsmen and workers. Over decades and by various hands, it portrayed the inhabitants of the houses with their tools and often also featured descriptions of manufacturing processes and handicrafts.

Even if 'chronicle' [24] and 'tournament book' [25] appear at first glance to be rather factual text genres, as they seem to recount events, these works essentially serve other purposes. As instruments of self-assurance and demonstration of one's own political and social rank, they create connections and causalities and stylize the course of actual events.

The period around 1500 was a phase of great political and cultural-historical upheaval at the transition between the Middle Ages and early modern times. In terms of style, the Renaissance, with its revival of ancient ideas and formal language, now replaced the Gothic period.

At the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries,  the laity began to turn increasingly to forms of private devotion and piety. New forms of personal devotional books developed. The previously predominant psalters were replaced by the book type of the 'Book of Hours', with prayers, litanies of the saints and devotions for private prayers.

This type of book, also known as the 'Livre d'heures', established itself in the late Middle Ages as the devotional book par excellence in the financially strong and literate circles of the nobility and the urban upper classes.

The ‘Livres d'heures’ flourished and became particularly popular in the 15th century, especially around the splendour-loving Burgundian and later the Burgundian-Habsburg court, in France and Flanders as well as in Île-de-France.  - Examples of this are the Books of Hours of Mary of Burgundy [30] and of King Henry IV of France [26] from the late 15th century.

The Bible of the northern Italian margrave Borso d'Este [27] is entirely in the Renaissance style. Around the middle of the 15th century, he commissioned a group of high-ranking illuminators to produce this magnificent manuscript, whose pictorial program is dedicated to knightly tournaments.

More a collection of pictures than a devotional book is the so-called 'Prayer Book of Duke Johann Albrecht' [28] from the 16th century, which brings together high-class devotional miniatures by the best illuminators of the time from more than 60 years.

The post-Reformation ‘Glockendon Prayer Book’ [29], created in 1534, with its splendid book decoration, marks both the last heyday and the end of the handwritten devotional book type.

In the books of hours shown here, we encounter the best and most famous miniaturists of the 15th and early 16th centuries, whose names are inseparably linked with the most beautiful products of Flemish book illumination of the late Middle Ages, such as Simon Marmion (c. 1425-1489), Gerard Horenbout (c. 1465 - c. 1541) and Simon Bening (c. 1483-1561).

Although the framing of the text and the writing appear to be similar, as they are usually the work of just one skilled miniaturist or calligrapher, almost all books of hours produced in Flanders contain paintings by several artists, although it is not always possible to identify them by name.

This also applies to the 'Rothschild Prayer Book' [31], which was created in Flanders at the beginning of the 16th century and to which Simon Bening, among others, contributed, but whose Coronation of the Virgin can certainly be attributed to Gerard Horenbout. - Both artists also contributed to the 'Book of Hours from Bruges' [33]. In addition, the illustrations of the 'Beatty Rosarium' [32] from the 1540s are attributed to Bening.

Older representatives of Flemish and Italian book illumination are the older 'Prayer Book of Charles V' [35] and the 'Book of Hours of the Sforza' [34], which were created at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries.

The 'Très belles heures du Nôtre Dame' [36], in which the so-called 'Paramentenmeister' (who designed a famous altarpiece) depicted the Coronation of the Virgin in the Gothic style, was created more than a hundred years earlier.

The 'Farnese Book of Hours' [37], which was created by Giulio Clavio (1498-1578) in the late Renaissance style for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-1589) towards the middle of the 16th century, is a partial reinterpretation of the book type of the Book of Hours. The imagery and choice of text have little in common with the older representatives of the genre.