Travels

Item data

Title

Travels

Names

Mandeville, John, Sir (Author)

Date / Origin

Date Created: 1459
Place: Germany

Library Location

Spencer Collection
Shelf locator: Spencer Coll. MS. 37

Genres

Manuscripts
Drawings
Books

Notes

Ownership: Inside front cover: "Luipold Munzer von babenburg" with two coats of arms. In possession of A. Rosenthal, London, 1938. Accessioned for Spencer, 1941.
Content: 1459 September 7
Content: 25 long lines. Quire signatures. 13 quires of twelve folios each, followed by one of six folios and one of eight folios.
Content: 81 colored drawings, three of which are full-page.
Content: Dated on f. 156v to September 7, 1459.
Content: De Ricci, Supplement, 332. Dictionary Catalog, 902. Library dossier.
Content: Foliation only goes to f. 168 because back pastedown is not counted and because f. 117 is followed by f. 117a.
Content: Large red initials at the opening of each section. Red slashes as placemarkers.
Content: Paper
Biographical/Historical: Text written ca. 1356 by Jean de Bourgogne, with real English nobleman as hero; was intended as guide for pilgrims to the Holy Land. Michael Velser translated it into German; his version first printed in Augsburg by Anton Sorg in 1481.
Content: COLLECTION HISTORY: The New York Public Library possesses one of the largest and finest collections of medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts in North America, yet its manuscript holdings are scarcely known to scholars, much less to a wide public audience. Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts are vehicles of the collective memory of western European culture, and provide a material connection between the scribes, illuminators, and patrons who produced these works and the audiences who view them today. The works represent diverse genres, from Bibles and missals to romance literature and science texts. Dating from the turn of the 10th century until well into the period of the Renaissance, these works give vivid testimony to the creative impulses of the often nameless craftsmen who continually discovered new ways of animating the contents of hand-produced books through inventive and sometimes exuberant manipulations of all the elements of the book: form and format, layout, script, decoration, illustration, and binding. Drawn from the Library's Spencer Collection and the Manuscripts and Archives Division, these works focus on the 9th through the 16th centuries -- seven hundred years of profound political, ecclesiastical, social, and intellectual change in Western Europe and the world. Among these rare items are a 10th-century Ottonian manuscript, with its imitation of Byzantine textile with gold decoration; the Towneley Lectionary, illuminated by Giulio Clovio (once praised as the "Michelangelo of small works"), which originated in Rome and probably belonged to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese; and a late 15th-century Book of Hours, which represents the leading style of illumination from Besançon, one of the French Regional Schools. (Source: NYPL Digital Gallery)
Biographical/Historical: BACKGROUND: "The Digital Scriptorium" originated in the mid-1990s as an image database, intended to unite scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. NYPL curators have augmented the Digital Scriptorium's primary documentation of NYPL's contribution of 259 manuscript parts with images of the works' most significant illuminations. Some works in this digital presentation also appeared in the exhibition, "The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at The New York Public Library," held October 21, 2005 - February 12, 2006 in the Library's D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall. - _Collection History_ and _Background_ text excerpted from the press release ‹http://www.nypl.org/research/calendar/exhib/hssl/hsslexhibdesc.cfm?id=354› and exhibition catalog ‹http://www.thelibraryshop.org/splendorexcat.html› descriptions for "The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at The New York Public Library." (Source: NYPL Digital Gallery)
Citation/Reference: RELATED RESOURCES: Alexander, Jonathan J. G., James H. Marrow, and Lucy Freeman Sandler. _The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at The New York Public Library_. (2005); NYPL. "The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at The New York Public Library." (2005-2006) ‹http://www.nypl.org/research/calendar/exhib/hssl/hsslexhibdesc.cfm?id=354›>; University of California, Berkeley. "The Digital Scriptorium." (c1996-2004) ‹http://www.digital-scriptorium.org› (Source: NYPL Digital Gallery)

Physical Description

Extent: ff. 1-170v : 212 x 153 mm

Languages

German

Identifiers

NYPL Catalog ID (bnumber): b22812649
Photo Order: 63653
NYPL Digital Gallery Description: 207523
Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): d4c33280-13d5-013a-df93-0242ac110004

Rights

The New York Public Library believes that this item is in the public domain under the laws of the United States, but did not make a determination as to its copyright status under the copyright laws of other countries. This item may not be in the public domain under the laws of other countries. Though not required, if you want to credit us as the source, please use the following statement, "From The New York Public Library," and provide a link back to the item on our Digital Collections site. Doing so helps us track how our collection is used and helps justify freely releasing even more content in the future.

Type Of Resource

Still Image
Text

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