Fragmented Illuminations: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Cuttings at the V&A

Beautiful exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at their collection of fragments of illuminated manuscripts and at how they acquired them.

The fashion for collecting these fragments started after the French Revolution when many manuscripts were sold off and religious text were no longer seen as relevant so they were split up and the illustrations taken out.

The show was divided into two rooms. In the first one I looked at the fragments themselves discussing what type of books they came from, who commissioned them and who the artists were. I was surprised at how many of the artists could be named. It was fantastic to see these pictures hung at head height rather than looking down on them in cases. You could really study the details. My favourite, shown here, is the artist Irene from Boccaccio’s “On Famous Women” made for Jacques d’Armagnac.

The second room looked at how the fragments had come into the museum’s collection in the 19th century focusing on the great collectors of the time but also looking at the commissioning of copies to fill gaps in the collection. They also discussed forgeries and a cataloguer who stole from some of the great French public libraries.

Closes 8 May 2022

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