![weird art in medieval manuscripts weird art in medieval manuscripts](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/7f/99/fa7f9941b214fbeed3357474f84a9fcb.jpg)
It doesn’t have as many sodomite monkeys or butt-trumpets as Buzzfeed, but it is a good selection of fascinating art at a reasonable price. If you want a large collection of medieval manuscript art, I recommend Masterpieces of Illumination. Honestly, though, for those not familiar with weirdness in Medieval illustration, it’s a decent primer of just how weird some can get, and proof that all those celibates hunched over candles illustrating religious texts got seriously punchy now and then. Long before the industrial printing press, hand-crafted manuscripts were painstakingly precise pieces of art that catered to an elite society where only a precious few could read. Here is the least offensive thing I could use: As Got Medieval writes, You get these all the time in the margins of gothic manuscripts. Since then, the Museum has built an expansive and balanced representation of the art form, with holdings totaling over 200 complete books and individual leaves. The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an otherwise unknown writing system, referred to as Voynichese. You have been warned, so I don’t want to hear about, okay? It’s a great unsolved mystery of medieval manuscripts. The Department of Manuscripts was established in 1983 with the acquisition of one of the finest private collections in the world, assembled by Peter and Irene Ludwig of Aachen, Germany.
![weird art in medieval manuscripts weird art in medieval manuscripts](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e1/50/e9/e150e97a6752156fef8c0e24eec15446--illuminated-manuscript-art-museum.jpg)
Case in point: Buzzfeed’s 20 Bizarre Examples of Medieval Marginalia. Please, please, PLEASE do not click that link if you are easily offended. I guess it’s nice when the internet discovers the much-better-than-the Renaissance-or-Enlightenment awesomeness of the Middle Ages, but like schoolboys searching for the dirty words in the dictionary, they often only seems to find the bizarre or outrageously sexual stuff.