Displaying items by tag: manuscript

‘The Book of Miracles,’ a nearly complete illustrated manuscript from the Renaissance, will be published in a new book. ‘The Book of Miracles,’ which surfaced a few years ago and recently entered a private collection, is composed of 169 pages with large-format illustrations in gouache and watercolor depicting celestial phenomena and constellations as well as scenes from the Old Testament and medieval tales.

The book was assembled by Till-Holger Borchert, an expert in Early Netherlandish paintings and the chief curator at the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, and Joshua P. Waterman, an expert on German art of the late medieval and early modern periods and a research associate at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.

Borchert and Waterman’s book includes ‘The Book of Miracles’ in its entirety for the first time, an introduction that helps explain the volume’s cultural and historical context, and an extensive description of the manuscript and its miniatures, as well as a complete transcript of the work’s text.

British authorities have lifted the export ban on Raphael’s drawing Head of a Young Apostle. The Old Master work will go to Leon Black, a New York-based billionaire who paid $47.9 million for it at Sotheby’s London in December 2012. The drawing, which was created between 1519 and 1520, was a study for the artist’s revered painting The Transfiguration, which resides in the Vatican’s collection.

The UK’s arts minister Ed Vaizey quickly placed the work under an export ban following the sale, which broke the auction record for a work on paper. The point of the ban was to provide enough time for an interested buyer to raise the money necessary to keep the drawing in the country. The ban expired on July 3, 2013 and was not extended.

Britain has recently employed a number of export bans on culturally significant works. Two pieces, which were purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, are currently being held in the U.K. Officials are waiting to see if any buyers will step forward for a rare 15^th century Flemish manuscript titled Roman de Gillion de Trazignes and Rembrandt Laughing, a self-portrait by the Dutch master. The Getty paid $5.8 million and $25 million for the works respectively.

The new Anne P. and Thomas A. Gray Library and MESDA Research Center at Old Salem Museums and Gardens in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, houses an impressive array of resources, including more than 20,000 catalogued volumes focused on southern history, material culture, and decorative arts; a craftsman database with more than 84,000 artisans; and an object database with more than 20,000 examples of southern decorative art.

Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum, which houses a vast collection of paintings, sculptures, art objects, and artifacts from around the world and throughout the ages, has joined forces with Stanford University Libraries to digitize its medieval manuscript collection. The Walters plans to make the works available online and has reached an agreement with Stanford Libraries to give over 100,000 high-resolution images of its manuscripts to the University’s Digital Repository.

While the original manuscripts will remain at the Walters Museum, the high-resolution images will be accessible to scholars around the world so that they can analyze the works and compare them with manuscripts in other locations.

The Walters Art Museum currently has 850 medieval illuminated manuscripts and 150 single leaves, which range in date from the 9th to the 19^th century; it is one of the most significant collections of medieval manuscripts in North America.

As part of its Civil War in America exhibition, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. is exhibiting the John Hay copy of the Gettysburg Address through May 4, 2013. The manuscript went on view on March 22, 2013 in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building. Admission is free and open to the public Mondays through Saturdays.

The Gettysburg Address is one of the best-known speeches in American history. Delivered by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War on November 19, 1863 at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA, the Gettysburg Address took place four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. The Battle of Gettysburg, which saw the largest number of causalities in the Civil War, is often considered the war’s turning point. Widely recognized as a literary masterpiece, the Gettysburg Address conveys in some 270 words the principles upon which the nation was founded, honors the men who had lost their lives in battle, and asks all citizens to renew their commitment to freedom and democracy.

The John Hay copy of the Address is the second of five known manuscript drafts. Lincoln personally gave the copy to Hay, one of his two secretaries. His other secretary, John Nicolay, is believed to have the first draft, known as the Nicolay copy. Hay’s descendants donated the Hay and Nicolay copies of the Gettysburg Address to the Library of Congress in 1916.

Civil War in America, which opened on November 12 2012, commemorates the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War and includes diaries, letters, maps, song sheets, newspapers, photographs, drawings, and artifacts that reveal the complexity of the Civil War through the individuals who experience it firsthand. The exhibition is on view through January 1, 2014.