Research Guides: Painted and Illuminated Manuscripts: Digitized Painted Manuscripts

Digital Facsimiles and Exhibits

The University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections has a small but growing collection of artist-quality books of hours an other medieval manuscripts. The Libraries' Fine Arts Library also holds several excellent volumes with reproductions of painted manuscripts available to students. Several libraries and archives that hold complete or near-complete codices of medieval manuscripts have made digital surrogates available online. Here is a selection of some digital copies of manuscripts that Special Collections holds facsimiles editions of, along with other related works.

Digitized Pages from the Bedford Hours
This digital collection from the British Library allows public access to digitized pages of the original manuscript held in the Library's collection.
The "Black Hours" from the the Morgan Library
The Morgan Library and Museum in New York holds a beautiful example of the rare blackened vellum technique for making books of hours. They have made digital images of the fragile document, originally produced in Bruges, Belgium, in the late 1400s, available on their website.
Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, ff 94r–209v, Including the earliest Beowulf Manuscript
Beautiful digitized version of the Nowell Manuscript from the British Library. The manuscript is most famous for having the earliest manuscript of Beowulf. The Anglo Saxon manuscripts also include a bestiary Marvels of the East, and Letters from Alexander to Aristotle.

Digital Facsimiles

There are several sources of high quality digital facsimiles of painted and illuminated manuscripts. Some institutions provide digital access (partial or complete) to select holdings. Other organizations and consortiums provide virtual access to hundreds and thousands of manuscripts. Other special collections like at the University of Arkansas Libraries work with students and researchers to allow limited digitization of resources for research purposes.

Catalog of Illuminated Manuscripts, British Library.
Hathi Trust Digital Library.
Medieval Manuscripts Digital Collection, University of Iowa.
Digitized rare books from the University of Oklahoma History of Science Collection.