Since many years now I have a pleasure to run lectures during calligraphy & illumination workshops provided by Barbara Bodziony. Obviously, those lectures focus on medieval manuscripts. Medieval books’ lovers usually are familiar with particular 12th century miniature, depicting monk working in scriptorium, inscribed as a portrait of scribe called…
In the Archives of the Cracow Cathedral Chapter there is a manuscript Liber Privilegiorum no 2, containing an ink votive drawing: the oldest survived work of art of that kind in Poland. The drawing depicts a donor, which is Cracow Bishop and the firs Polish cardinal, Zbigniew Oleśnicki (1389-1455), worshiping…
Scholars researching everyday life of the Middle Ages often use iconographic sources, that is paintings, miniatures, drawings and woodcuts. Although many of them depict religious scenes, we may find a lot of everyday objects placed in them; including items related to medieval childhood and nursery. Childhood in medieval art was…
In my previous post on “Roman de la Rose” I mentioned two illuminated manuscripts kept in the Polish libraries and available in the service Polona.pl. The Warsaw manuscript is a typical French production of the late 14th century, but the one now in Cracow is actually quite weird and problematic…
In contrary to the common belief, medieval art is actually full of erotic depictions, but if we need an actual image of the couple having sex, we should look for it in one of the Roman de la Rose manuscripts. It was a medieval best-seller, and so it seems strange…