Dot Porter, SIMS Curator of Digital Humanities, presents a Video Orientation to the University of Pennsylvania Library's LJS 447, descriptions and illustrations of domestic and wild animals, birds, insects, marine animals, plants, stemless plants, and herbs. Sources include Dioscorides, Galen, and Ibn al-Bayṭār. The larger, encyclopedic work of which the text of this manuscript is a part, also includes cosmography, geography, history, and biography....
Flipping through Ms. Codex 2136, a tiny book of hours, use of Rome, made in northern Italy in the second half of the 15th century. Illuminated leaves at the beginning of the Hours of the Virgin, the Penitential Psalms, and the Office of the Dead, probably with miniatures, were removed and replaced with parchment leaves with text only, possibly in the 19th century. So it's not as fancy as it used to be, but we still love it! #manuscript #medieval #medievalmanuscript #15thcentury #bookofhours #prayerbook #prayer #rome #italy #15thcentury #bookhistory #rarebooks #bookstagram #librariesofinstagram
Dot Porter, SIMS Curator of Digital Humanities, presents a Video Orientation to the University of Pennsylvania Library's LJS 443, a collection of commentaries, treatises, tables and diagrams concerning the calendar, by authors from the 7th to the 15th centuries, the most recent being Hakob Ghrimetsʻi, who compiled his commentary in 1416, probably within a decade of the copying of this manuscript....
A rainbow-eyed octopus spreads their tentacles on p. 43 of Ms. Codex 3, three volumes of paintings or hand-colored sketches depicting mainly insects, fish and other marine life, birds and flowers. We don't know much about these books except that they were made in Japan, probably in the 19th century. If you know more, let us know! Link in bio.
The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 