Medieval and Renaissance Resources
British Library Digital Collections
The British Library has digitized a number of their special holdings, including medieval manuscripts, Renaissance festival books, Shakespeare’s original quartos, and the Magna Carta. All these items are available in individual databases in their “Digital Collections” section |
Closer to Van Eyck:
Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece A website thoroughly documenting Jan Van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb in Ghent Cathedral during restoration in 2010. Includes high resolution zoom, infrared photography and x-radiography |
Digitized Medieval Manuscripts
App that crowdsources links to libraries worldwide where medieval manuscripts can be browsed for free, including the Vatican Library, Biblioteque Nationale de France, and Free Library of Philadelphia. Many libraries include high resolution photos and extensive metadata |
Digital Scriptorium
Image database compiling renaissance and medieval manuscripts from institutions around the world including museums, universities, and private collections. All works are extensively researched and available with medium to high resolution image downloads |
Gothic Ivories Project
Online database of ivory sculptures from Medieval Europe, aggregated from a number of participating museums and institutions, in collaboration with the Courtauld Institute of Art. Content can be searched or browsed based on country of origin and keywords |
International Center for Medieval Art
The ICMA’s resources include a free image database hosted on Flickr, the Limestone Sculpture Provenance project, Lordship and Commune, a collaborative research database focusing on Reims and Amiens, and a census of doctoral dissertations on Medieval art |
Medieval Stained Glass Photographic Archive
Digital archive focused solely on stained glass, cataloged geographically and thematically. All images are mapped to their locations in the architectural plan and are available for educational and scholarly purposes |
Norway Universities Museum Photoportal
This database provides a wealth of pre-Viking and Germanic artifacts of Scandinavia, with large high quality photos available under Creative Commons licensing. Chrome or another automatically translating browser is recommended, since the site is only available in Norwegian |