About

ILLUMINATED invites you to view multiple images within each manuscript, zoom in on details, discover drawings hidden beneath the painted surfaces, learn about the pigments and the advanced scientific methods used for their identification, and explore the relationships between scribes, artists and original owners.

Thousands of images survive between the covers of illuminated manuscripts – books that were copied and painted by hand for over a millennium before the arrival of printing in Europe, and long after. Their gold and precious pigments are often as fresh and vibrant as they were when first applied to the pages. The richest and best preserved repositories of medieval and Renaissance painting, illuminated manuscripts offer the largest resource for the study of artists’ materials and techniques in Europe from the 6th to the 16th century.