The Illuminated Middle Ages

June 9, 2005 8:35 AM

The Illuminated Middle Agesdatabase presents several hundred recently digitized illuminated texts from French national library collections.This web site gives access to the entire database. Only a portion of the full collection has been translated into English for the web site, but visitors may also view the French-language galleries in the site, where a dozen texts from each of the ten themes are presented daily. You are sure to enjoy this collection of breathtaking texts dating from the year 500 through the 1400s.
posted by hortense (19 comments total)

hortense, thank you thank you thank you for posting this site!
posted by ibeji at 8:44 AM on June 9, 2005

What ibeji said.
posted by IndigoJones at 8:47 AM on June 9, 2005

Many thanks for this, hortense!
posted by Ricky_gr10 at 8:52 AM on June 9, 2005

Some modern illumination.

That's sort of a fringe self-link; the museum where I work is exhibiting a contemporary illuminated Bible. However, I don't have anything to do with the exhibit or the web site.
posted by COBRA! at 8:57 AM on June 9, 2005

Thanks! My dad did illuminated scrollwork, he's got work in Buckingham Palace and other places. I really should get him to teach me some when I'm home in July.
posted by substrate at 8:57 AM on June 9, 2005

BTW:I found this site on one of the links over at quonsar and
madamjujujive's blort.
posted by hortense at 8:57 AM on June 9, 2005

Extra super excellent. Muy bueno.
posted by gramschmidt at 9:37 AM on June 9, 2005

really nice! thanks
posted by nervousfritz at 9:46 AM on June 9, 2005

Awesome awesome awesome.

was about to comment on it also being a nice use of flash, but it's not, is it? Even more aweseme^3.
posted by freebird at 9:49 AM on June 9, 2005

This is wonderful, hortense! Thank you.
posted by Lush at 9:51 AM on June 9, 2005

Illumination through Blort?
Well done hortense!
posted by peacay at 9:58 AM on June 9, 2005

This is such an excellent link. Thanks. I'm going to have Name of the Rose fantasies all afternoon.
posted by OmieWise at 10:15 AM on June 9, 2005

Great link. I love that the have high quality reproductions and not just small fuzzy pics. Thanks.
posted by arse_hat at 10:57 AM on June 9, 2005

Beautiful. Just gorgeous.
posted by Medieval Maven at 11:15 AM on June 9, 2005

Wow. These are really great.
Did anyone happen to catch the exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art about the Indian Miniatures or the Book Arts of India. They're parallel to medieval manuscripts...
posted by Jon-o at 12:02 PM on June 9, 2005

Another fabulous site, which perhaps isn't as well known as it should be, is the Pierpont Morgan Library's Images from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, which claims to include (though I haven't counted) over five thousand images from manuscripts in the Morgan Library's collections. Here's a sampler of some of the best; I particularly recommend the Worksop Bestiary, with its bats, its foxes, its crocodile, and many more weird and wonderful creatures besides.
posted by verstegan at 12:26 PM on June 9, 2005

Yay! What freebird said. And if you adore stuff like this, you may already be familiar with and probably find this blog a pleasure as well. Always fascinating.

Also, verstegan, that linked image of the Fox Feigning Death so reminds me of the client meeting I had this morning. Brrr.
posted by Haruspex at 12:54 PM on June 9, 2005

Wikipedia has a nicely evolving Illuminated Manuscript scriptroria. While all the images are of course riped, they contain a lot of standardized contextual information, and there's a gallary page.
posted by stbalbach at 1:10 PM on June 9, 2005

Thanks for the links. Mandragore is a very similar site run by the Bibliotheque nationale de France. The pictures aren't quite as big, but there are more categories and more pictures. You might also check out the links at the manuscript page of Website Otto Vervaart.
posted by mokujin at 5:44 PM on June 9, 2005