This essay is concerned with the innovations found in printed Books of Hours that mark them as a departure from the conventions of Hours recorded in manuscript form. This metamorphosis is alluded to here in the title, in reference to the emergence of a beautiful butterfly from a pupa; the latter morphs into the former, looks different, but is essentially the same. So too, many structural elements in manuscript Books of Hours are carried over into the age of print, but new elements are introduced which give printed Hours a revitalised and refreshing new look. This essay describes and discusses two hand-decorated, early sixteenth-century French Books of Hours held in the Baillieu Library of the University of Melbourne and the Art Gallery of Ballarat. These will be referred to throughout as the Baillieu Hours and the Ballarat Hours. Both are printed on vellum and then systematically and carefully illuminated, with metalcut border illustrations on the outer and bottom margins of their texts. Since these Books of Hours are hand-illuminated and on vellum it may be assumed that they were owned by people of some means, perhaps merchants or professionals. People of lesser means would have been able to acquire the same books, but these would have been printed on paper and not been hand-decorated at additional expense.

The observations here are specific, not generalised, since such a small sampling of a genre whose editions numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands, cannot be taken as necessarily representative. As will be demonstrated, however, the printed borders of these books are of particular interest since they are related to metalcuts and woodblocks used by other contemporary printers and publishers; they are also the most unique or innovative features of these books, since the disposition of the full-page miniatures introducing the various canonical hours in them is for the most part conventional. Illustrations were not legally protected in France until the 1520s; consequently, it is often difficult to determine whether metalcuts, woodblocks, and typefaces were owned, borrowed, or copied by those using them: as the printers and publishers resided cheek by jowl in the street opposite Notre Dame de Paris.