In my final year as an undergraduate, I travelled to Vienna to examine a number of early sixteenth-century Flemish illuminated manuscripts in the collection of the Austrian National Library. One of the numbers I carefully wrote on the request form was Cod ser n 2844. As the librarian presented the closed book to me, its sumptuous crimson velvet binding with silver-gilt coat of arms, catches and clasps signaled that it was something extraordinary; but little did I know that it would become a central part of both my undergraduate and doctoral dissertations. Nor did I know that within a few years it would no longer call the National Library home and would find itself in a place that at the time of its birth, Europeans did not even know existed.

Famed for the sheer quantity and quality of its illustrations capturing charming details of early sixteenth-century life, the Rothschild Prayer Book has also gained notoriety over the past century for its monetary value. In 1906 it was already highly prized at 150,000 crowns, making it the most valuable of all the manuscripts in the collection of Baron Nathaniel Rothschild. Twice in the last two decades, it has broken records for the highest amount ever paid for an illuminated manuscript: in 1999 for $13.3m USD and in 2014 for $13.6m USD. It has also kept extraordinary company, being associated with important historical individuals including the formidable Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands (r. 1506–1530); three generations of the cultured Viennese branch of the Rothschild banking family; members of Adolf Hitler's inner circle; and more recently self-made Australian billionaire, philanthropist and collector Kerry Stokes.