Working with daunting speed, he made his way through most of the Cambridge collections and pencilled a nearly complete catalogue of the University Library manuscripts in the 1930s. Librarians would send him manuscripts, which he catalogued while sitting up in bed at King’s. James (‘Monty’), Provost of King’s College and one of my heroes.Monty had his own distinct way of working. The only attempt to track all of the manuscripts down and catalogue them had been carried out by the brilliant Victorian scholar and writer of atmospheric ghost stories Dr M. Until quite recently, no-one was quite sure exactly how many illuminated manuscripts were owned by the University and kept in the University Library – nor was there any up-to-date catalogue of them. It is at this moment that experts in manuscript illumination, including art historians like myself, come in to help. A manuscript is a magical little world into which we peer.īut behind every exhibition lies a great deal of expert academic work to unearth the truth of these often complex and sometimes downright obscure books. The power of these often tiny, sometimes grand, but always intriguing objects to attract and fascinate the public remains undiminished. In 2005, their sheer splendour hit the headlines when many of the best manuscripts were displayed at The Fitzwilliam Museum in The Cambridge Illuminations exhibition, one of the Museum’s most successful ever held. The Fitzwilliam Museum, the University Library and the Colleges possess treasures of international quality rivalling those in the British Library, or even the Vatican. Cambridge is a wonder-world for the study of medieval illuminated manuscripts.
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