The Koninklijke Bibliotheek, national library of the Netherlands, has made accessible all illustrations from the rich collection of medieval illuminated manuscripts from KB. The website Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts (www.kb.nl/manuscripts) presents almost 8000 unique illustrations from 328 medieval manuscripts. These illustrations have been made accessible by Iconclass, a world-wide used classification system to describe the content of images. The website was developed with a subsidy from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and a contribution of KB.
From the strange creatures that are seen by Baudolino in Umberto Eco's latest novel to images of Christ's birth, from medieval elephants to images of Pentecost; the website provides a varied array of beautiful illustrations.
The search screen provides access to browse the images per manuscript or to search directly for images by themes or subjects. Specialists in Medieval Art as well as occasional visitors looking for mere pretty pictures will find what they are looking for in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts. The indexes provide easy access to place names, names of artists, dates, iconographic themes, types and more. Miniatures from a center of production can be selected or illustrations of animals, historical events and persons or attributes. Combined search is also possible. In this way, a user can search for illustrations of Maria in manuscripts from the town of Delft that were produced between 1400 and 1500. Each manuscript provides a link to its bibliography.
In December 2001 the images from the collection of medieval manuscripts from the Museum of the Book will be added to the website.
Information: Department of Special Collections, telephone +070-3140322.
Visit Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
28 June 2001