As the Mongols spread the invention’s knowledge throughout Eurasia in the 13th century, it would revolutionize warfare and make previous military technology and many medieval castles obsolete. If it settles on a hard surface ruffled or folded it can be straightened out with a puff of breath, straightening itself instantly like a shimmering shaken blanket. Gunpowder was invented in China sometime between the 9th and 11th centuries, and it did not take long to be used in weapons. These depictions of animals could sometimes be symbolic, or related into the text somehow. If dropped it hardly seems to flutter downwards. For example, the entry on lions claims that lions are born dead, and have life breathed into them by their fathers at three days old, and that lionesses have a first litter of five cubs, and have successive litters reduced by one each year. It is virtually without thickness and has almost no weight. Gallois, so-called Naives Hours, 1839 – 42, Paris. A piece of gold leaf is infinitely thinner than the thinnest paper. Heures françoises et latines pour Madame L. See more ideas about medieval art, medieval manuscript, medieval artwork. The Naives book of hours, on the other hand, was commissioned by Jules Gallois, Count of Naives, for his wife, as a devotional work, though also supporting his claim to descend from noble medieval ancestors. Explore Mphistofeless board 'Weird Illuminations' on Pinterest. The images that follow had a variety of functions. The Missal was presented in 1844 to the Count of Chambord, then head of the House of Bourbon, by the Legitimist Ladies of France, who were in favour of a return to monarchy. Illuminated manuscripts provided the medieval reader-viewer with a rich array of images that often rival those that we encounter on Halloween, from gory scenes of decapitated martyrs or arrow-pierced saints to walking cadavers, creepy spiders, spooky cemeteries, and even witches and ghosts. Two high-end French manuscripts stand out as relatively recent acquisitions: the Naives Hours and the politically-charged Chambord Missal. Pugin and Phoebe Traquair are present in the library, but also some manuscripts reflecting the popular taste for illumination in Victorian England, such as illuminated addresses commissioned for ceremonial occasions, and instances of amateur illumination.

Owing to the time and circumstances of its foundation, the museum holds examples of manuscript illumination exemplifying the revival of interest for anything medieval in the 19th century.

Weird medieval illuminations