Exhibition in Focus: Royal Manuscripts, British Library
11th November 2011
It is easy for us to be dazzled by illuminated manuscripts – all that gloriously vivid colour and brightly glittering gold. In part that was what their makers and owners wanted us to feel. We should wonder at the supreme artistry of some of the finest paintings to survive from the Middle Ages, painstakingly created over months, sometimes years, by the leading artists of their day. We should also be impressed by those well-preserved vestiges that showcase the magnificence of the great and the good of the medieval world. Yet, it is worth trying to look more carefully and to understand them more deeply. For they have so much to tell us about times very different from our own. Indeed they do so in a unique way, not as mere records of historical fact, but as active players in history. Reading their texts and viewing their illustrations informed how medieval people lived – what they knew and who they aspired to be.