Dressed in Gold

Cristoforo Majorana - Tree of Jesse Naples, ca. 1480
Christ and the Tree of Jesse; Putti in the Margins. Church Psalter

Master of the Revelations
of Saint Bridget of Siena
Panel Miniature with the Monk John Climacus;
Historiated Border with Exemplary Scenes of
Eremitic LifeSiena,late 14th century [detail]

Bartolomeo Sanvito - The Triumph of Eternity
(Depicted as Christ Upheld on the Cross by God,
Surrounded by a Mandorla of Angel Heads)
from 'I Trionfi (The Triumphs)'
by Francesco Petrarch Florence,15th century [detail]

Bartolomeo Sanvito - The Triumph of Time
(Depicted as Father Time on a Stag-drawn Cart,
Accompanied by the Ages of Man)
from 'I Trionfi (The Triumphs)'
by Francesco Petrarch Florence, 15th century

Bartolomeo Sanvito - The Triumph of Death
(Depicting a Bull-drawn Cart with a Black Shroud

[The top image isn't labelled because I'm presently getting 'cold fusion' errors for the site these come from, but I want to post it because this has taken a looonngg time for various reasons to get together and I can't be sure when the server will be back up (I'm sure it will be back).]

Dressed in Gold: Books of the Italian Renaissance is an exhibition presently showing at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and they are to be commended for posting a fair sampling of their collection online. This is not a research site so the manuscripts appear to be incomplete but they do have screen size jpegs available.

The website is "an illustrated catalogue of the extraordinary collection of rarely seen 14th and 15th century manuscripts held by the Walters Art Museum. This site allows you instant access to over 400 folios (pages) of 29 manuscripts produced in Venice, Milan, Rome, Florence, and Naples during the Italian Renaissance. You will be able to fully explore the artistic achievements of the different regions in manuscripts ranging from liturgical texts to private prayer books, and from classical poetry to diplomatic documents."

I only have an amateur appreciation for illuminated manuscripts but I do like to peruse them occasionally and these are fine specimens. The real world exhibition goes until January 2006

Addit: I went over to PECIA (a great weblog about medieval manuscripts) after posting this to see if Jean-Luc had heard about it and of course he posted it yesterday. But he also advises of the extensive Archimides Palimpsest project website, also under the auspices of the Walters Art Museum.

"This tenth century manuscript is the unique source for two of Archimedes Treatises, The Method and Stomachion, and it is the unique source for the Greek text of On Floating Bodies. Discovered in 1906 by J.L. Heiberg, it plays a prominent role in his 1910-15 edition of the works of Archimedes, upon which all subsequent work on Archimedes has been based...This site presents a summary of six years of work to conserve, image and study the Archimedes Palimpsest"