The New York Public Library possesses one of the finest collections of medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts in North America, yet its manuscript holdings are scarcely known to scholars, much less to a wide public audience. Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts are vehicles of the collective memory of western European culture, and provide a material connection between the scribes, illuminators, and patrons who produced these works and the audiences who view them today. The works represent diverse genres, from Bibles and missals to romance literature and science texts. Drawn entirely from the Library's Spencer Collection and the Manuscripts and Archives Division, the 100 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the exhibition will focus on the 9th through the 16th centuries -- seven hundred years of profound political, ecclesiastical, social, and intellectual change in Western Europe and the world.
Among the rare items on view will be a 10th-century Ottonian manuscript, with its imitation of Byzantine textile with gold decoration; the Towneley Lectionary, illuminated by Giulio Clovio (once praised as the "Michelangelo of small works"), which originated in Rome and probably belonged to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese; and a late 15th-century Book of Hours, which represents the leading style of illumination from Besançon, one of the French Regional Schools. The history of each work's patrons and owners -- from the Psalter-Hours of Blanche of Burgundy, the first wife of King Charles IV, to a copy of the Roman de la Rose owned by John Ruskin in the 19th century -- provides insight into the background of the works themselves and the centuries through which they have passed.
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