Secrets of the scribes

Few objects provide me with quite such an immersive time-travelling experience as an illuminated manuscript.

There's something about those pulsatingly vibrant colours alongside the rich gold, like the sun captured on paper - a combination so powerful that my eyes seem to briefly lose focus. There's something about those layers of symbolism, with each scene, design and colour loaded with meaning to be conveyed to the contemporary viewer. And there's something about their tangibility that whisks me away on a carpet of imagination, picturing them being created, being read, being owned and passed on. Lost, maybe. Found again. Hidden. Valued.

Rarely do the general public get the opportunity to view these precious texts first hand, however - most are locked away in the bowels of libraries and museums in order to preserve them, and are only occasionally revealed through documentaries, such as Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings by Dr Janina Ramirez.

But thanks to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, there is now such an opportunity! Running until 30 December this year, Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts allows visitors to see 150 of the finest and most awe-inspiring examples of complete illuminated texts and fragments from long-lost volumes, produced between the 8^th and 17^th centuries. The majority of these come from the museum’s own collection, as bequeathed by the institution’s founding father Viscount Fitzwilliam in 1816 under strict instructions that they should never leave the building.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the press viewing of the exhibition, at which I was particularly fascinated to discover the close relationship between alchemy and artistic practice at the time in which the manuscripts were created; gold, for example, was known as ‘the sun’ and silver as ‘the moon’. The exhibition’s alchemical scroll (pictured right), partially rolled out in a glass case and viewable in its entirety on the museum’s digital resource, was undoubtedly one of the stars of the show.

Thanks to cutting-edge research by the Fitzwilliam's curators, scientists and conservators, the exhibition is even able to show us the materials that were used to create each colour pigment used on the pages of the manuscripts on display - from plant materials and lichens to minerals such as lapis lazuli and azurite.

Art, science, religion and humanity in perfect harmony.