Manuscript Monday: Ms. Codex 1645 – Technical treatise on the painting of miniatures

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Ms. Codex 1645, an 18th-century copy of a technical treatise on the painting of miniatures, in print from 1673. Includes information on the reduction of images and mixes of pigments for landscapes, skies, varieties of flowers, skin, faces, drapery, and jewels. Slightly more than half the manuscript (through p. 138) closely matches early printed editions; the remainder of the text presents material from other sources, including preparations and uses of gold leaf, varnish, lacquer, and gold and silver inks, and instructions for marbling paper and tinting parchment. It was written in Nancy, France, in 1744.

Video Orientation to Ms. Codex 1645

You can read the complete record for this document (and find links to digitized copies) on Franklin. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.

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