illumination of books and manuscripts

"Presents fifty of the very first adventure stories, set out across seven sections, featuring Heroes and Heroines; Epic Battles; Magical Events and Miracles; Villains, Crime and Murder; Quests and Journeys; Animal stories; and Love Stories. Ranging from long and complex epics developed around historical figures including Charlemagne, King Arthur and Alexander the Great, to smaller, vibrant tales absorbing local characters on the periphery. Featuring both the stories and art behind Merlin, Christine de Pisan, Sir Gawain, Renard the Fox, Dante and Beatrice, the Odyssey, Saint Brendon and Tristan and Isolde, this book provides an intimate insight into the medieval mind. [The author} has used her profound knowledge of the British Library's illuminated manuscript collections to explore some of literature's . . . celebrated stories, together with the deep history of the books and chronicles in which they were first preserved. Presented alongside them in full color are some. . . examples of art to survive from the 8th to the 16th centuries: works of supreme beauty inspired by the stories"--OCLC.

Several voices narrate this stylistic murder mystery and love story in which a sixteenth-century sultan in Istanbul orders a noted artist, Enishte Effendi, to create a book illustrated in the Western style, which is considered blasphemous in the Islamic world--a dangerous assignment that results in the mysterious death of one of Enishte's chosen gilders.

Contains color reproductions of illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance which are part of the collection held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

Explores the history of illuminated manuscripts, the highly decorated books produced during the Middle Ages, and looks at how they were made and the different styles in which they were created.

Traces the history of illuminated manuscripts from the Dark Ages to the invention of printing and beyond, looking at the circumstances in which the manuscripts were created, and discussing the different types of manuscripts, their construction, authors, texts, readers, and purposes.

A collection of illustrations from Books of Hours, small-sized Christian devotionals that were popular in the Middle Ages.

Presents color reproductions and descriptions of illuminated manuscripts drawn from the collection of the British Library, ranging in date from the end of the seventh century to the middle of the seventeenth century.