Details: The Magi and the Shepherds are two separate groups of people mentioned in the Bible in relation to Jesus' birth. The Magi, also known as the Wise Men, were wealthy foreigners who followed a star to find Jesus[1][2]. The Shepherds were local shepherds who were visited...
Details: The decoration on this page is by two or possibly three different hands. The headpiece, ornamented title, and initial letter "E" are the work of the scribe Luke the Cypriot, while the images and framing ornament in the side margin are by a professional artist(s). It...
Details: This large Ethiopian Gospel Book was made in the first half of the sixteenth century and is written in Ge'ez, the traditional liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Containing eleven full-page miniatures, six canon tables, and five elaborately ornamented harags, or headpieces, this manuscript represents the...
Details: This is one of twenty-six known manuscripts by the hand of Luke the Cypriot (active 1583-1625), an accomplished Greek calligrapher who worked after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (1453). He copied it in 1594 at his episcopal see of Buzau (in Wallachia, now Romania) and soon took it to...
Details: One of four codicologically unrelated leaves from an antiphonary, a choral book containing the music used in the Divine Office. 1 column of 6 staves in Latin. Bounding lines blind or light plummet, doubled and full-length to upper and lower edges, writing lines blind or light plummet, with upper...
Details: Created between 1405 and 1408 or 1409, probably in Paris, the Belles Heures, or Beautiful Hours, a private devotional book, is one of the most sumptuous manuscripts to have come down to us from the Middle Ages. Commissioned by Jean de France, duc de Berry from the Limbourg brothers,...
Details: A carpet page is a type of illuminated manuscript page that is characterized by intricate, non-figurative, patterned designs. They are often found at the beginning of Gospel Books in Insular manuscripts, and are known for their use of bright colors, active lines, and complex interlacing patterns. Carpet pages may...
Details: The Lindisfarne Gospels is an illuminated manuscript gospel book probably produced around the years 715–720 in the monastery at Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland, England[2]. It contains the Gospels of the four Evangelists Mark, John, Luke, and Matthew[2]. The manuscript was produced in a scriptorium...
Details: The Lindisfarne Gospels is an illuminated manuscript gospel book probably produced around the years 715–720 in the monastery at Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland, England[2]. It contains the Gospels of the four Evangelists Mark, John, Luke, and Matthew[2]. The manuscript was produced in a scriptorium...
Details: The Chi-Rho is a Christian symbol formed by superimposing the first two letters of the Greek word ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ (Christos), which are 'Chi' (X) and 'Rho' (P)[1][2][3]. It looks like an X placed over the stem of a P[4][5]. The Lindisfarne...
Details: The Lindisfarne Gospels is an illuminated manuscript gospel book produced around the years 715–720 in the monastery at Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland, England[1][2]. It is a spectacular example of Insular or Hiberno-Saxon art[3], created with a quill pen and black ink made from...
Details: Folio 27r from the Lindisfarne Gospels, incipit to the Gospel of Matthew. The main text contains the first sentence of the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: "Liber generationis Iesu Christi filii David filii Abraham" ("The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David,...
Details: This leaf was an opening page of a mariegola, or register, painted by Cristoforo Cortese, the most famous and prolific Venetian illuminator of the first half of the fifteenth century, for a German confraternity in Venice. The lay members of this confraternity are shown kneeling at the feet of...
Details: This miniature, together with another illuminated music-making angel (Robert Lehman Collection, 1975.1.2465b), is a fragment of the decorative border of a manuscript folio. The leaf may have belonged to an antiphonary—a choir book containing sung portions of the Divine Office—that was commissioned in 1401 for...
Details: Pentecost is a Christian holiday that takes place on the 50th day after Easter Sunday. It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks, as described in the Acts of the...
Details: Guillaume Vrelant, born in Utrecht, was known to be in Bruges from 1454 onward where he died around 1481. He probably went there to sidestep a 1427 law which banned the sale of Utrecht images. A painter very much in vogue, he founded the Illuminators’ Guild in Bruges under...
Details: The Master of Noah’s Ark was named after an illuminated initial containing that subject now in the Vatican Library. Though he may have worked in Florence, he was unlikely to have been Florentine himself. This rare miniature depicts the story from the apocrypha of Tobias, son of Tobit,...
Details: Guillaume Vrelant, born in Utrecht, was known to be in Bruges from 1454 onward where he died around 1481. He probably went there to sidestep a 1427 law which banned the sale of Utrecht images. A painter very much in vogue, he founded the Illuminators’ Guild in Bruges under...
Details: The Coronation of the Virgin or Coronation of Mary is a subject in Christian art, especially popular in Italy in the 13th to 15th centuries, but continuing in popularity until the 18th century and beyond. Christ, sometimes accompanied by God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the form...
0:00/0:431×Details: The style and quality of this manuscript's decoration is typical of deluxe Parisian books made for aristocratic or royal patrons. Most of the book's decoration appears to be the work of the Master of the Boqueteaux, an artist active at the...
0:00/1:021×Details: These two pages come from a prayer book which belonged to Claude of France (1499-1524), queen consort of France. Claude was the daughter of the French king Louis XII and Anne of Brittany and the first wife of king Francis I of France. She received...
Leaf from an Antiphonary Coronation of the Virgin Cleveland Museum of Art0:00/ 0:291×Details: The unidentified illuminator of this leaf is named after his work on a painted triptych that once hung behind the altar of the Church of Santa Maria del Ponte in the small village of...
Details: The Ascension of Jesus (anglicized from the Vulgate Latin: ascensio Iesu, lit. 'ascent of Jesus') is the Christian teaching that Christ physically departed from Earth by rising into Heaven, in the presence of eleven of his apostles. According to the New Testament narrative, the Ascension occurred on...
Details: Also known as the "Poor Men's Bible," the Biblia Pauperum was a simple picture book used to explain biblical prophecies and symbolism. These volumes served as an aid for preachers to demonstrate the unity of the Bible. The iconography of these popular books juxtaposed two...
