Although it only started in March, the Twitter account @MedievalReacts has soared to over 270,000 followers — all because it takes images without attribution from libraries and other sources and pairs them with punchy, modern text.
medieval art
Posted inArt
Two Bibles on View in NYC Showcase the Art and Violence of Medieval Books
Two incredible examples of medieval book art are on rare view in New York: the Metropolitan Museum of Art is hosting the hefty Winchester Bible, and the Morgan Library and Museum is celebrating the Crusader Bible and its vivid battle scenes.
Posted inArt
Elephant Water Clock Among 25,000 Pages of Medieval Arabic Scientific Manuscripts
A new online portal created by the British Library and Qatar Foundation features 25,000 pages of medieval Arabic manuscripts centered on the history of science.
Posted inBooks
New Scans of the Voynich Manuscript, a Medieval Book No One Can Read
The Voynich Manuscript is one of the most obsessed-over historical enigmas. A medieval book dating from the late 15th or 16th century, its strange, flowing script has never been deciphered, its origins never determined.
Posted inNews
Newly Uncovered 13th-Century Frescoes Go on Display in Rome
Rome may be a mecca for Medieval art, but it isn’t every day that conservationists there discover a trove of long-lost frescoes dating to the 1240s.
Posted inArt
The Delicate and Gruesome Art of Medieval Alabaster
The English Reformation of the 1530s wasn’t just an upheaval of the country’s spirituality as the Church of England severed its Catholic ties; it disrupted whole industries. One was the alabaster sculpture business of the Midlands.
Posted inArt
Rare Windows Into the Past: Canterbury Stained Glass Arrives at the Cloisters
Six of the medieval stained-glass windows that usually soar some 60 feet up in England’s Canterbury Cathedral are on their first journey outside of their ecclesiastical home, brought down to a more intimate level in an exhibition at the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan.
Posted inArt
Music for a Solemn Space: The First Contemporary Art at the Cloisters
For the first time in its history, the Cloisters is exhibiting a work of contemporary art.
Posted inArt
Courtauld Institute Attempts to Catalogue Every Work of Gothic Ivory Art
The last time anyone attempted to catalogue all known Gothic ivory sculpture was a three-volume publication from a French scholar in 1924, but now the Gothic Ivories Project at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art is taking a 21st century stab at it with an online database.
Posted inArt
Say Yes to Unicorns
What a wondrous and rare creature is the unicorn — and of course sadly nonexistent. But that hasn’t stopped the single-horned equine of myth to prance its way into centuries of art, acting as graceful spirit strutting through the forest or a captured creature representing everything from the entrapment of alluring women to the crucifixion of Christ. And it’s also been the central beast at the Metropolitan Museum’s medieval branch, the Cloisters, which is this year celebrating its 75th anniversary.
Posted inArt
More Vibrant Tales of Obsolete Pigments
After our first installment of obsolete pigments, we had such a strong response that we realized we’d only hit the tip of the curious history of vanished colors.
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
The Left Rights’s “I’m on Crack” — Souren Melikian on 20th C Italian figural artists — Glenn Lowry speaks about new plans to expand the MoMA — the 10 best British buildings of the 21st C — Peter Saul interview in the Brooklyn Rail — From the Archives: “How I Got My DIt Degree” — Grayson Perry talks about shock in contemporary art — Anne Hedeman explores how medieval texts are interconnected
