Medieval Art and Architecture
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The Luttrell Psalter – Day 10
The Luttrell Psalter is a beautiful book that’s celebrated for its animal marginalia and idealized scenes of everyday medieval life.
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Worksop Bestiary – Day 9
Bestiaries – books about animals and their qualities – are my favorite kind of medieval illuminated manuscript because of their great imagery.
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Medieval University Students’ Textbooks – Day 8
Just as they are today, university students were big consumers of books in the Middle Ages. Learn about illuminated textbooks in law, medicine, and more.
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The Manuscript Collection of Jean de Berry – Day 7
Instead of focusing on a manuscript or a component of one, I’ve chosen to write today about medieval history’s most prolific manuscript collector.
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Initials and Capital Letters – Day 6
Initials – capital letters within manuscripts’ texts – are key venues for decoration, aides in navigating the text, and veritable works of art.
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The Black Hours – Day 5
Today’s post is about a truly stunning manuscript that demonstrates the relatively rare but wonderful phenomenon of manuscripts on colored parchment.
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Text in Manuscripts – Day 4
Art historians primarily see manuscripts as works of art, but we shouldn’t forget that they are also books intended to convey the written word.
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A Fourteenth-Century Italian Choir Book – Day 3
Today’s entry features a page from a 14th-century choir book called an antiphonary. Like most medieval choir books, it’s huge and has big illustrations.
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The Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux – Day 2
The early-14th century Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux introduces us to the Book of Hours, surprising scale in manuscripts, and the wacky world of marginalia.
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The Book of Kells – Day 1
It only seems appropriate to start off 31 Days of Medieval Manuscripts with the Book of Kells, arguably the world’s most iconic illuminated manuscript.
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31 Days of Medieval Manuscripts
31 Days of Medieval Manuscripts is a series I wrote in October 2015 as part of my participation in a 31-day bogging challenge. Participants were encouraged to select a specific topic to focus on during the challenge, and I chose medieval manuscripts – a topic I love and studied extensively in college. Every day, I…
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Carmina Burana
I’ve been working on a dance routine to “Carmina Burana” and wanted to do some research on the history of the piece. I was planning to write more about gargoyles this week, but I decided to write about this instead when I saw a picture of the original medieval manuscript.* Before it was a well-known piece of…
