The University collection certainly existed by 1400, and has an early catalogue dating to 1424, but most of the decorated books came into the collection much later. When it was first created, the University Library was a working collection of textbooks which were seldom illuminated – they were basically practical working texts. We needed to explore more deeply how the collection itself had formed. About 60% of the manuscripts are British, and many of the most important European ‘schools’ of illumination are represented. The University Library’s collection turns out to be quite extraordinarily rich and extensive: it spans 700 years of illumination – from the oldest, the 9th-century Book of Cerne, to the youngest, the Italian Renaissance books of the 16th century. Now – and after many summers during which I simply disappeared into the University Library, escaped College and University politics, and peacefully catalogued its collection – we have between us produced a comprehensive catalogue of the 472 manuscripts which we thought could usefully be described as illuminated or decorated. With the aid of a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, we set to work with the assistance of Dr Stella Panayotova, who subsequently went on to extend the project to the Colleges and The Fitzwilliam as we had hoped.
Together we decided that the best starting point for such a project would be the University Library itself. My plan of attack was to get the one man vital to this enterprise ‘on side’, my old friend Dr Patrick Zutshi, by then Keeper of Manuscripts in the University Library. However, it was never published and, since his time, the collection has continued to grow.Īs a Cambridge research student working on medieval art in the 1980s, I had occasionally made forays into the collection following in Monty’s footsteps, but it wasn’t until 1995 when I joined the History of Art Department in Cambridge that I hatched a plan which Monty himself might have saluted, or so I hoped – to re-catalogue all the Cambridge collections to modern standards, and illustrate them comprehensively. Working with daunting speed, he made his way through most of the Cambridge collections and pencilled a nearly complete catalogue of the University Library manuscripts in the 1930s. Librarians would send him manuscripts, which he catalogued while sitting up in bed at King’s. James (‘Monty’), Provost of King’s College and one of my heroes.Monty had his own distinct way of working. The only attempt to track all of the manuscripts down and catalogue them had been carried out by the brilliant Victorian scholar and writer of atmospheric ghost stories Dr M. Until quite recently, no-one was quite sure exactly how many illuminated manuscripts were owned by the University and kept in the University Library – nor was there any up-to-date catalogue of them. It is at this moment that experts in manuscript illumination, including art historians like myself, come in to help. A manuscript is a magical little world into which we peer.īut behind every exhibition lies a great deal of expert academic work to unearth the truth of these often complex and sometimes downright obscure books. The power of these often tiny, sometimes grand, but always intriguing objects to attract and fascinate the public remains undiminished. In 2005, their sheer splendour hit the headlines when many of the best manuscripts were displayed at The Fitzwilliam Museum in The Cambridge Illuminations exhibition, one of the Museum’s most successful ever held. The Fitzwilliam Museum, the University Library and the Colleges possess treasures of international quality rivalling those in the British Library, or even the Vatican.
Cambridge is a wonder-world for the study of medieval illuminated manuscripts.
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