junktorium

assorted arcana; mostly but not merely medieval

[thevintagearab-deactivated20180]

[upennmanuscripts]

Firdawsi’s “Shahnama”: seated prince in a landscape. Safavid. Second half of 16th century. Object Place: Iran

Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Accession Number 14.601

[magictransistor]

Ende. The Battle of the Bird and the Serpent, The Apostles, The Whore of Babylon, The Beast, The Baptism of Christ, The Woman Dressed in the Sun and the Dragon, The Angel Of the Abyss and the Infernal Locusts, Heaven. Beatus de Girona. 975. 

[magictransistor]

Al-Qazwini. ‘Aja'ib al-Makhluqat. India, Bijapur. 1570. 

[demonagerie]

Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, 0429 (409) f.015v . Chansons de Charles, duc de Croyet d’Anchot (17th century)

[demonagerie]

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, NAL 2290, f160r. Beatus. Commentaire sur l’Apocalypse.

[theevildead--deactivated2023033]

[junktorium]

Tenmon Bun’ya no zu (map showing divisions of the heavens and regions they govern) star map with wooden case by Shibukawa Harumi (1639-1715), Japan, 1677. Combines Shibukawa’s systematic astronomical observations with concepts from Chinese field-allocation astrology.

[hyperallergic]

Sixteen original 15th and 16th century Malian manuscripts will go on display Friday at the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, The Art Newspaper reported. The exhibition, titledTimbuktu Renaissance, has an exceptional backstory: the precious manuscripts were smuggled out of Timbuktu in the wake of the city’s 2012 takeover at the hands of Islamist rebels.

READ MORE

[explore-blog]

"The Tree of Virtues," c. 1250, from The Book of Trees – Manuel Lima’s spectacular 800-year history of visualizing science, spirituality, and human knowledge in symbolic tree diagrams.

[magictransistor]

Adolf Wölfli

[sexycodicology]

Amazing manuscript in the shape of the fleur-de-lis. It is a Book of Hours for the use of Rome, made circa 1555.

(Amiens, Bibliothèque municipale, fonds L’Escalopier 022)

[centuriespast]

Ganesha and Sarasvati India

Philadelphia Museum of Art

[mughalshit]

Two Camels Fighting

by ‘Abd al-Samad

Indian, Mughal, circa 1590 (court at Fatehpur Sikri, or Lahore)

Opaque watercolor and ink on paper

This painting serves as both an homage to ‘Abd al-Samad’s lineage and an appeal to his son Muhammad Sharif not to lose sight of his artistic roots. The artist’s inscription tells us that he has painted this version of a famous original by the master Bihzad (ca. 1450–1535/36) from memory as a gift for his son to serve as a model of what is possible, even for an artist in his eighty-fifth year. The work is a testimony to the dazzling verisimilitude that the finest painters could achieve; witness the power of observation and the skill at rendering every minutia. ‘Abd al-Samad was a master trained in the Persian school, where technical virtuosity was prized equally with poetic sensibility.

[spacetravelco]

[junktorium]

Geographical and astronomical illustrations from the mid-1800s

by John Philipps Emslie

Source (some): the Wellcome Collection; via spacetravelco; jtotheizzoe

[timur-i-lang]

Dragon carpet 

Kuba, Azerbaijan, 17th cen.

"This rug represents the village carpet-weaving tradition of the Caucasus that was contemporaneously with court production in Ottoman Turkey and Safavid Iran. While rugs produced in royal workshops had flowing, floral patterns, those from provincial weaving centers retained a strongly geometric character. The motif of highly stylized dragons, which are depicted here, gave the name "Dragon Carpet" to this type of rug which was produced in Trans-Caucasia."

[allstarsandconstellations]

Rare Book: Wunderzeichenbuch, or ‘Book Of Miracles’, 1552

“In AD 1119, fiery arrows or spears appeared in the sky, everywhere in the whole sky. And stars fell from the sky and when water was poured over them, they made a sound or screamed.” The words are taken from an unparalleled Wunderzeichenbuch – or “book of miracles”. The miracles in question, all 167 of them, are hand-painted in gouache and watercolour and arranged in chronological order, from Old Testament scenes (the Flood, the parting of the Red Sea) to the Last Judgement. The main body of the work, however, is given over to events from recorded history, apocalyptic scenes such as a rain of meat in Liguria or a plague of vipers in Hungary; it’s a Renaissance equivalent of cranks’ newsletter The Fortean Times, albeit with a distinct focus on the astronomical. Some 60 or so of the folios depict cosmic events, particularly comets, painted with inventive élan and highlighted with gold leaf.

Read more: http://www.stephenpatience.co.uk/Essays/Wunderzeichenbuch.html

[demonagerie]

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arménien 291, f. 127r (Battle of the Hydaspes). Pseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander Romance. Turkey or Iran, mid-17th century.

[medievalpoc]

The Beowulf Manuscript; Marvels of the East; Beowulf; Judith (Cotton MC Vitellius)

f. 106v. Two men representing the race of Ethiopians.

England (c. 1075)

Parchment document, 245 × 185 mm.

British Museum, London.

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