We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
Illuminated Manuscripts: Treasures of the Pierpont Morgan Library New York (Tiny Folio, 14)
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About Illuminated Manuscripts: Treasures Of The Pierpont
Product Description Glorious works of art as well as documents of bygone eras, painted an illuminated manuscripts supply perhaps the greatest and by far the best-preserved evidence of daily life during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This Tiny Folio draws on one of the greatest collections in the world to illustrate the angels, demons, and everyday denizens of the medieval world. Amazon.com Review This little treasure is one of a score of pocket-size tomes in the "Tiny Folio" series, which offers mini courses in art history based on the collections of the world's great museums. The nearly 300 pages, just four by four-and-a-half inches, hold almost that many full-color illustrations of the jewel-like illuminations that adorn Medieval manuscripts. This handy book is the perfect purse or pocket-stuffer, guaranteed to transport the reader to a paradise of unicorns and crimson-clad maidens, jousting knights, lute music, and gold-framed bestiaries. There are also the mouths of hell, Satan and the damned, and a hirsute "wild woman" rescuing a child from a curiously lamb-like dragon. All in all, it's a mesmerizing trip through five chapters: Biblical Scenes; Saints, Rites, and Rituals; Royalty, Pastimes, and Professions; Flora and Fauna; and The Supernatural, with a short essay to introduce each one. This is a great book to give as a gift or use as a visitor's guide to the Morgan Library, as the editors have provided thorough captions, an index to the illustrations, and a short but carefully chosen bibliography (which includes Roger S. Wieck's Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art, a larger look, so to speak, at one particularly beautiful type of illuminated work in the Morgan Library's collection). Be warned that some readers may need to take a magnifier to these minuscule, detailed pages, which teem with brilliant colors, vividly drawn decorations, and scenes that range from the bizarrely imaginative to the pastoral and serene. --Peggy Moorman About the Author Charles E. Pierce, Jr., is former director of the Pierpont Morgan Library. William M. Voelkle is the Library's Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts. Susan Lengle is a curatorial assistant. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Foreword It is generally acknowledged that Pierpont Morgan was the greatest collector of our century. Within a period of some twenty years before his death in 1913, he assembled vast collections of antiquities, paintings, sculptures, tapestries, porcelains, watches, and other decorative objects. But none of these was to find a permanent home in The Pierpont Morgan Library. That building, commissioned from Charles McKim in 1902 and finished in 1906, was destined to house the collections that were evidently closest to his heart: autograph manuscripts, rare books and bindings, old master drawings, Mesopotamian cylinder seals, papyri, and medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Of these, it is perhaps the last for which the Library is best known. Pierponts son, Jack, who founded the Morgan Library in 1924, made important additions until his death in 1943. The present volume, which includes many manuscripts acquired since 1943, conveys the full range and quality of the collection as it now exists. By making accessible to a larger audience the delights of an art form usually buried in closed books, this volume also helps fulfill the goals of the founders. Charles E. Pierce, Jr. Director, The Pierpont Morgan Library Introduction Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts are many-splendored things, objects of both great beauty and tremendous pictorial variety and richness. They are like museums between the covers of books and constitute the largest surviving body of painting from this period. Because the pictures have been protected by bindings, their incredible freshness has been preserved and they have avoided the vicissitudes suffered by panel and wall painting. Since
