Ever wonder how books and documents were illustrated before the age of printing?
Starting Friday, the History Museum of Mobile will display 35 rare examples of artwork from medieval Bibles, Prayer Books, Psalters, Books of Hours, Choir Books, Missals, Breviaries and Lectionaries.
The exhibition, "Painted Pages: Illuminated Manuscripts, 13th — 18th Centuries," includes some with elaborate gold leaf decorations and intricate ornaments. They are from the collection of the Reading Public Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania, which organized the exhibition.
Examples of the materials—parchment, vellum, gold leaf, and minerals which were ground into pigments —used by artists before the age of printed books to create these extraordinary pages are also featured in the exhibit. The exhibition opens on January 10, 2025 and will be on view through May 25, 2025, sponsored locally by the Hearin-Chandler Foundation and WKRG TV-5.
Highlights include a lavish Bifolio from a Book of Hours with illuminations by Joachinus de Gigantibus de Rotenberg (German, active 1440s – 1490s), a Perugian Leaf from a Dominican Missal from the late fourteenth century, a large Bifolio of a Spanish Choir Book from the fifteenth century, a Hebrew scroll of the Book of Esther from the eighteenth century, and a leather-bound Italian Gradual containing the chants for the mass penned in the 1720s.
Most of the works date from the thirteenth through the eighteenth centuries and are created with ink on parchment or vellum (animal skin). French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Flemish, English, and German examples will be included in the exhibition. Additionally, non-Western sheets, including a remarkable seventeenth-century leaf from the Koran and Shahnameh (the illustrated Persian Book of Kings) pages from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nearly all of the sheets came to the Reading Public Museum through Otto Ege, a well-known Cleveland-area bookseller and specialist who was born in Reading, Pennsylvania.
These works focus on the rich tradition of manuscript illumination in medieval Europe and the Middle East and convey a wide range of activities, from the sacred to the secular.
To learn more, visit here.
The History Museum of Mobile is open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays 1-5 p.m.
Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler writes about Alabama’s people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former Alabama Public Service Commissioner and State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at ZeiglerElderCare@yahoo.com.
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