Posts Categorized "Manuscripts"

We use the word “marginal” to dismiss something as unimportant or trivial. But images in the margins of medieval books are so important they get their own name, marginalia, a Latin term that simply means “things in the margins.” Sometimes marginalia are purely humorous. But often they’re much more: sophisticated annotations to the text, continuations [...]

 
Tags: Abbey Bible, Bible, illuminated manuscripts, marginalia, medieval art, recent acquisitions

3 Comments   |      |   Trackback   |   Permalink

The Getty Center is one of few places in the United States where you can see medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts year-round. With three or four exhibitions per year drawn almost exclusively from the permanent collection, in addition to major international loan exhibitions like Imagining the Past in France, 1250–1500 and Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph [...]

 
Tags: books, illuminated manuscripts, medieval art, rare books, Renaissance, sacred art, Virgin and Child

2 Comments   |      |   Trackback   |   Permalink

For over a year now, a fashion trend from medieval Europe—once reserved for men of elite social standing—has been resurrected and adopted by women, causing some fashionistas to cringe. Tights are back. In mid-15th-century England, a law restricted the wearing of short tunics that revealed the male buttocks to members of the upper class. In works [...]

 
Tags: fashion, French art, illuminated manuscripts, medieval art, Middle Ages

Leave a comment   |      |   Trackback   |   Permalink

The current exhibition Fashion in the Middles Ages, closing Sunday, August 14, examines costumes in the pages of medieval manuscripts. At times, the clothing seen in manuscript illuminations reflected the actual styles and fabrics of the Middle Ages—but at others, the outerwear we see is purely fanciful or given an idealized twist. Let’s look at [...]

 
Tags: fashion, Getty Museum collection, illuminated manuscripts, medieval art, Middle Ages, rare books

Leave a comment   |      |   Trackback   |   Permalink

A “fashion revolution” in the Middle Ages? Yes, says art historian Roger Wieck, curator of Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands at the Morgan Library. Just as art was changing with the dawn of the Renaissance, so, too, was clothing—a story he’ll tell in a free lecture at the [...]

 
Tags: fashion, free events, illuminated manuscripts, lectures, medieval art, Middle Ages, Roger Wieck

1 Comment   |      |   Trackback   |   Permalink

What does a 12th-century bronze sculpture from Cambodia have in common with a 15th-century manuscript from Germany?  Both, surprisingly, relate to the story of the Buddha. The exhibition Gods of Angkor: Bronzes from the National Museum of Cambodia is displayed in one of the Getty Center’s North Pavilion galleries, near our collection of medieval and [...]

 
Tags: Buddha, Buddhism, Cambodian Bronzes, Christianity, medieval art

2 Comments   |      |   Trackback   |   Permalink

Every day at 1:30 p.m., I and other gallery teachers give tours of the exhibition Imagining the Past in France, 1250–1500—closing Sunday—which features illuminated manuscripts of kings and battles, myths and legends, Biblical heroes and parables, and other tales intended to bring the past alive before the eyes of medieval French readers. I like to [...]

 
Tags: gallery programs, gallery teachers, gallery tours, Hundred Years' War, illuminated manuscripts, Imagining the Past in France, Middle French, parchment, stained glass

1 Comment   |      |   Trackback   |   Permalink

For when one sees a story illustrated, whether of Troy or something else, he sees the actions of the worthy men that lived in those times, just as though they were present.    —Richard de Fournival, Bestiare d’amours, ca. 1250 The past was always within reach for medieval artists, just as it had been for their [...]

 
Tags: ancient Greece, French art, Greek art, Imagining the Past in France, medieval art, The Trojan War, Troy

6 Comments   |      |   Trackback   |   Permalink

In the French Middle Ages, as today, banquets were opportunities for the well-heeled to entertain guests in style. The set-up was simple: boards placed on trestles topped with white cloths, wine diluted with water in clay vessels, meats on five-day-old slabs of bread serving as rustic plates. Forks were absent. Meals began and ended with [...]

 
Tags: cooking, culinary workshops, food, food events, French art, Imagining the Past in France, medieval art, Middle Ages, recipes

2 Comments   |      |   Trackback   |   Permalink