Drawn primarily from the Getty Museum’s permanent collection, The Art of Devotion in the Middle Ages, on display August 28, 2012–February 3, 2013, at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, features elaborately illuminated books executed in precious pigments and gold. Among these works is a page from The Ponche Hours titled Noli mi tangere. This manuscript was illuminated by Master of the Chronique scandaleuse in Paris in about the year 1500, and is a beautiful piece that shows the importance of private devotion in the middle ages. By the late Middle Ages, men and women celebrated their religious beliefs not only during Church services, but also with the aid of small personal prayer books that were beautifully written and illuminated. Illumination, from the Latin illuminare, "to light up or illuminate," describes the glow created by the colors, especially gold and silver, used to embellish manuscripts. Personal prayer books or "books of hours" were extremely common, especially among the upper classes in Paris, a city renowned for its production of hand-illuminated books. The manuscript's texts are written in French and Latin, with some Latin passages punctuated by the personal pronoun "tu" (the familiar "you" in French). The Poncher Hours is an unusual example of the degree to which books of hours could be highly personalized for the patron it was commissioned for--in this case, Denise Poncher, a young woman from an elite family whose father served as treasurer of wars for the French crown and whose uncle was bishop of Paris. What personalizes this book, which may have been given on the occasion of her wedding, are the many allusions to marriage and motherhood in the selection of specific texts and images, as well as an illustration that includes the bride herself and also a coat of arms combining the Poncher arms with those of her husband, Jean Brosset. On this particular p