Thursday, January 18, 2007

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful....manuscripts

Ahhh...illuminated manuscripts. So lovely. So carefully done. Occasionally even---so bawdy.

But I digress. I have fond appreciation for pages carefully drawn/woodcut/imprinted/colored in detail I can't begin to imagine by men (primarily) whose entire lives could be devoted to this. I have a special place in my heart for the Book of Kells---the Chi Ro page of which I had as an enormous poster in my two apartments ago covering a big water spot on the wall. *sigh*

So of course I had to dive right in when I saw the post on Resource Shelf: January 2007 Curator’s Choice: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from Western Europe

NYPL's Digital gallery is amazing to begin with but now there are even more lovely pictures for me to pour over. I wish it was as tactile as the real experience (where one peers from outside a glass casing...wishing one could hold the book and touch the page...) but I'll settle for being wistful in my apartment instead. At least that I can do at three a.m. when sleep eludes me again.

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