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Medieval Art and Architecture

Library resources for art history courses FAH215, FAH267, FAH271, FAH423, FAH434, FAH435.

Access to UTL Online MSS Collections

Codices Vossiani Latini Online collection contains all 363 codices which form the world-famous Latin section of "Vossius" manuscript collection. The Codices Vossiani Latini contains a large number of early medieval manuscripts, including 76 Carolingian manuscripts dating before 900. Famous are the oldest sources of Lucretius' De natura rerum, of Cicero's philosophical world, and the earliest manuscripts of Plinius' Historia naturalis. The collection is accompanied by detailed information dram from K.A. de Meyier's catalogues of the codices, which providers researchers with essential information on the content, context, and physical appearance of each codex. Of interest to scholars in rare books and publishing, Medieval history, classics, and Latin. http://go.utlib.ca/cat/13345040

Research Guide

The list of manuscripts below is a 'sampling' of what is available online. For a more comprehensive resource on medieval manuscripts see the UTM research guide MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS. Due to the continual growth and creation of new digital mss collections, the research guide remains an on-going work in progress.

Digital Manuscript COLLECTIONS

* *Remember when you search manuscript COLLECTIONS for an image, you need to know the call number or the specific details about the mss you are seeking. This information is available in secondary literature. The 'image content' or 'subject' is not usually cataloged in the digital manuscript collections, unfortunately.

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Rome. More than 17,000 MSS digitized.

British Museum Library, London, UK.

Courtauld Institute. Image Database: Art and Architecture.

Enluminures. A French-language gateway to manuscript collections in Parisian libraries other than the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 

J. Paul Getty Museum. Explore the Getty collection by clicking on “Manuscripts,” then entering a keyword or doing an advanced search.

Monastic Manuscript Project: Lists digital mss collection across NA and Europe, with direct links.

Medieval Manuscripts - European Collections  This site has a long list of digital collections across Europe.

Morgan Library and Museum, New York. Click for Medical Texts

National Library of the Netherlands. View highlights or, for a deeper dive, search by keyword, author, miniaturist, place of origin, and more.

Vatican Library. An extensive digitization project is putting manuscript treasures of the Vatican online. As of this writing, the number of digitized manuscripts exceeds 13,000.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. Medieval Collection is searchable.

Walters Art Museum. The Walters provides high-resolution images of many of its more than 900 illuminated manuscripts.

Wellcome Institute, London. (Medical History)

Yale Digital Commons. Does include their rare manuscript collections and you can filter by type of collection.