Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination
Last weekend I had the good fortune to visit "Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination" at The British Library. What an incredible exhibition. 150 beautifully illustrated and written manuscripts on display for us to be absorbed by. We didn't read the information before going in, so failed to realise that there were 150 of them to look at - we probably took an hour looking at the first 15 before looking beyond the next manuscript and realising the extent yet to be seen. Definitely the kind of exhibition to take your time over, and to be absorbed by, and also to think a bit about what these manuscripts have survived - 500 years of fires, wars etc.
The British Library have put images from some of the manuscripts into Facebook albums and whilst they are good to look at and study the detail of, they look so very flat and ordinary when compared to the real thing - no matter how good the photographer is, it's very hard to get gold to shimmer in a still image.
On Monday, Richard spotted the BBC Four series Illuminations: The Private Life of Kings which provided to be an excellent resource of post-exhibition information, although I did find myself saying "Ohh, yes, I remember that one" quite a lot.
All in all, definitely one to try and get to.