Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures
Welcome to the Medieval Text Manuscripts Blog! This blog highlights what makes our text manuscripts particularly interesting and appealing to us – and (we hope) to you too! Here we explore what these books can tell us about how they were made and used. We also share what we know of their most fascinating and unusual contents, makers, and owners. Some of our discoveries are quite significant, some merely amusing, and some bizarre. All medieval manuscripts have much to reveal to their attentive modern audiences. Follow our blog to learn more about them.
July 16, 2020
What do you think of when you hear the expression “a sleeper”? Perhaps you think of adorable babies and toddlers safe and warm in their sleepers? Or maybe...
January 08, 2020
Japan and Europe, two regions whose paths crossed only in 1543. Paris and Kyoto, two cities separated by 5,970 miles. Can they have something in common? Let’s try to see how and to what degree...
August 19, 2019
Out on your summer vacation, perhaps looking for that ideal Instagram photo, have you ever gazed in wonder at a painting and thought “how did they do that?” Well, artists’ secrets are sometimes revealed in unexpected places – like the flyleaf of a manuscript.
April 15, 2019
I know, I know, that isn’t very good… Please forgive the attempt to bring to mind some of the most famous verses there are about Spring...
November 15, 2017
At first glance, this unlikely juxtaposition seems to mean nothing. Even Mr. Google yields no results in a search that combines this artist, subject, and scholar. But, indeed, one of Damien Hirst’s most inventive new works is...
October 26, 2017
For Halloween we pulled a “thriller” off the shelf with graveyard mysteries and bloody murder...
October 19, 2017
This post takes a closer look at what’s in a Book of Hours, which is arguably the most important text of the late Middle Ages. This is why...
January 31, 2017
Since 1991, Les Enluminures has sold important examples of early drawings both to major public institutions and to private collectors. Today, opportunities to purchase drawings before 1500 are extremely limited...
May 16, 2016
Anyone who has ever handled medieval manuscripts comes away with a sense of how they bring the past alive in a very human way. In all sorts of manners, manuscripts divulge...
March 02, 2016
The text manuscripts featured on this blog so far range in their contents from the rare or unique to works that would have been circulated and valued within particular circles ...
