MetaFilter posts tagged with earlymodern

Caravaggio and Rembrandt, two great tastes that go well together

Kattullus — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:34:08 -0800

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam invites you to compare Caravaggio and Rembrandt. For an overview of Rembrandt's work here are Rembrandt van Rijn: Life and Work and A Web Catalogue of Rembrandt Paintings. For Caravaggio there's caravaggio.com which makes use of the Italian website Tutta l'opera del Caravaggio.

Medieval and early modern liturgical books

thomas j wise — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:26:13 -0800

Graduel à l'usage de Saint-Dié digitizes a French gradual (choir music for the Mass) created in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. For more information about what's what, see the handy definitions offered by the British Library or Celebrating the Liturgy's Books. A number of other beautiful liturgical manuscripts are now online. (Note: many sites are in French or German.)

Leaves from various liturgical books
Le Graduel de Bellelay (c. 12th century)
Graduel de St. Katharinenthal (14th c.; three images)
Sherborne Missal
Missale Manuscripta Bruges (15th century)
Book of Gregorian Chant (c. 16th century)
Gradual (c. 16th century)
Missale Lugdunense (16th century)
Spanish antiphoner (16th century)
Codices Electronici Sangallenses digitizes liturgical and other books from the Abbey Library of St. Gallen.
For a growing archive of medieval polyphonic manuscripts, visit the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (go to "search" and click on the "images only" box; full-sized view requires registration).

Simon Vostre

thomas j wise — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:59:27 -0800

The late-fifteenth/early-sixteenth century French publisher Simon Vostre was renowned for his Books of Hours. Adoration of the Magi and Dives and Lazarus (first two images) (Bridgeman Art Library) Annunciation to the Shepherds (Lambeth Palace Library) Book of Hours (Bryn Mawr) Book of Hours (Einar Hansen Library) Book of Hours (Wake Forest) Book of Hours (Grolier Club) Book of Hours (scroll down) (Charlie Jensen) Book of Hours (University of Manitoba) Book of Hours (BYU Idaho) Book of Hours (Dance of Death) (Medieval Macabre) Book of Hours for the Use of Rome (scroll down) (British Library) Delphic Sibyl (ArtBase) Flight into Egypt and Adoration of the Trinity (scroll down) (Bridgeman Art Library) Hore Marie virginis scd[u]m vsum Saru[m]... (Bryn Mawr) Les lunettes des Princes Nativity (Princeton) Planetary Man (Morgan Library) Vostre's printer's device The device in color

Studies in Scarlet

thomas j wise — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 17:05:59 -0800

Studies in Scarlet: Marriage & Sexuality in the US & UK, 1815-1914 , courtesy of Harvard University, features digitized trial narratives for over 400 cases--some famous, most not. (Harvard also has a more general collection of trial narratives here.) There are earlier trial narratives at Rictor Norton's Homosexuality in Eighteenth Century England: A Sourcebook and Early Eighteenth-Century Newspaper Reports; see also CrimeCulture's Rogue's Gallery and a Victorian anthology, Curiosities of Street Literature (originally published in 1871). Albert Borowitz has a brief history of true crime narratives here. For more historical criminality from the investigator's point of view, check out the Forensic Medicine Archives Project at the University of Glasgow. (Main link via VICTORIA.)

Book of Martyrs

thomas j wise — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 20:11:00 -0800

John Foxe's Book of Martyrs offers complete, searchable transcriptions of the 1563, 1570, 1576, and 1583 editions of Foxe's Actes and Monuments... Readers can juxtapose two editions to see Foxe's alterations. The site includes images of the foldout woodcuts, along with the title pages. Other goodies include a raft of introductory essays and detailed commentaries on the illustrations to books 10-12. See also the Foxe Digital Library Project at Ohio State University, which includes woodcuts, images of selected pages, and an exhibition catalog. There are more woodcuts from the 1610 edition at Penn's Center for Electronic Text and Image and from the 1784 edition at Kansas State University.

A London Provisioner's Chronicle, 1550-1563

thomas j wise — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:32:01 -0800

Henry's Machyn's sixteenth-century Chronicle was nearly destroyed in an eighteenth-century fire, but editors Richard W. Bailey, Marilyn Miller, and Colette Moore have just published a new online scholarly edition, comprising both a reconstructed text (thanks to the very posthumous assistance of John Strype) and images of all the pages. There are several other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century diaries and chronicles online, including Dana F. Sutton's edition of William Camden's Diary (in both Latin and English), J. G. Nichols' Victorian edition of the Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, and the Earls Colne project's transcription of the diary of clergyman Ralph Josselin. (Machyn link via the very handy Textual Studies, 1500-1800.)

Index of Medieval Medical Images

thomas j wise — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 13:39:56 -0800

Index of Medieval Medical Images Searchable collection of medieval illustrations (to the year 1500); the thumbnails can be viewed at varying magnifications. There are many more interesting online repositories devoted to the history of medical illustration--both medieval and early modern--including Historical Anatomies on the Web, Anatomia, Seeing is Believing, and Medieval Manuscripts in the National Library of Medicine.

The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft

jb — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 17:01:19 -0800

The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft: A searchable database of people accused of witchcraft in Scotland between 1563 and 1736. Currently, 3,837 people have been identified, 3,212 by name. 113 cases involved fairies, 74 had a known political or property motive, 70 involved some aspect of "white magic". This is the real, and utterly fascinating, history of a hysteria that griped a country and a continent for more than a century. Religion, folk belief, fear and local relations all played out in witchhunts - and we still do not really understand why, why they started or why they ended. Projects like this one are invaluable to help us begin. (Co-developed by mefite Flitcraft)