The Renaissance-era Rothschild Prayerbook, the National Library of Australia

National library to show 500-year-old illuminated manuscript for first time

The Renaissance-era Rothschild Prayerbook was stolen by the Nazis in Vienna in 1938 but later recovered and sold at auction to businessman Kerry Stokes for $15.5m

 Virgin and child on a crescent moon and The seven joys of the Virgin, in the Rothschild Prayer Book c. 1505–1510 Photograph: supplied

Alexandra Spring

Friday 10 April 2015 03.07 BST

Australians will get their first look at one of the world’s most expensive illuminated manuscripts in May.

The National Library of Australia announced on Friday morning that the early sixteenth-century Rothschild prayerbook, owned by Australian businessmanKerry Stokes, will go on display for the first time in the southern hemisphere

Stokes made headlines last year when he purchased the 150-page prayer book through London auction house Christie’s for $15.5m, making it the most expensive manuscript ever purchased at the time.

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 St Vincent of Saragossa and Suffrage to St Vincent, in the Rothschild Prayer Book c. 1505–1510. Photograph: supplied

Made from vellum and lined with gold, the book features 67 full-page miniatures created by Flemish artists Gerard Horenbout, Simon Bening and Gerard David. It was described by Dr Eugenie Dondoni, one of Christie’s international book specialists, as “one of the most exquisite manuscripts of the Flemish renaissance” and features richly detailed illustrations of contemporary life, saints and mythical characters.

The prayer book has a complicated history. It was created in Bruges between 1505 and 1510 for an unidentified member of the aristocracy. Its whereabouts were a mystery for almost 350 years, before it turned up in the Rothschild family collection in Austria. How they acquired it is unknown.

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 The Annunciation and The beginning of matins, in the Rothschild Prayer Book c. 1505–1510 Photograph: supplied

When Germany invaded Austria in 1938 the prayer book was looted by the Nazis. In January 1942, Hitler returned it to National Library in Vienna in Nazi-controlled Austria, but when the war ended, the library refused to return it to the Rothschild family.

It was restituted to the Rothschilds in 1999 after protracted legal proceedings and then sold to an anonymous bidder. It returned to Christies in 2014, when Stokes acquired it.

One of the book’s last remaining mysteries is the whereabouts of four missing pages.

• The prayer book will be on display at the National Library of Australia in Canberra from 22 May until 9 August