Damage Atlas of the medieval illuminated manuscript
Since 2002 the Damage Atlas for medieval manuscripts has been developed by the Illuminare - Centre for the Study of Medieval Art (KU Leuven) and the data processing service of the Arts Faculty of KU Leuven, as a reference tool for the material care of the illuminated manuscript. The project is structurally linked with the Inventory of illuminated manuscripts Flanders Collection project. Its aim is the art historical recording of all the illuminated manuscripts in some eighty libraries, museums and monastery collections in the present-day geographical area of Flanders. The complete corpus contains around 1,500 manuscripts. Since 2002, the research project has received an annual subsidy from the Ministry of the Flemish Community (Archives Act) and encompasses the broad descriptive recording of the corpus of medieval manuscripts by a team of art historians from the Catholic University of Leuven.
For the initial composition of the Damage Atlas, a selection of relevant manuscripts and miniatures was made from this body of manuscripts. The recording, in an Access database, specifies the deterioration of and damage to the fragile parchment and paper heritage, preceded by a detailed description in records of the technical and material characteristics of the manuscript and the historical data relating to it. Thus the status of both formal characteristics and technical condition is given.
In 2003, after a year of preparatory study and software development, some fifty manuscripts dating from the 9th to the 16th century in the collections of Ghent University Library, the Historical Foundation of the City of Bruges and Kortrijk Municipal Public Library were technically screened and described. The data recorded for each manuscript comprise the technical and material description of the binding with an evaluation of its condition and an assessment of the degree of urgency for conservation. This is followed by a technical and material description of the support (paper or parchment), then the ink, leaf metals and pictorial layers of the illumination are closely examined. The environment in which the manuscript is currently boxed and preserved is evaluated and a reference to relevant literature and analogous cases completes the entry. The collected records, in which as many different illustrations of damage as possible are included, provide the basis for a user-friendly database. Digital micro and macro recordings of the technical characteristics of bindings and miniatures and clear pictures of damage are recorded in situ in the collections. Damage is systematically identified and described in separate fields. In each case, codicological information, art historical and paint-technical documentation and characteristics that illustrate the conditions and restoration history are photographed. The physical, chemical and biological deterioration of the manuscript is recorded. The photographic documentation is managed in a databank with CUMULUS software, a programme that has been used since 2002 by the department of Archaeology, Art History and Musicology of the Catholic University of Leuven for the digital photo archiving of large image files. As a result, the Damage Atlas is a combination of a collection and a conservation survey that endeavours to give both the art historian and the collection manager an insight into the material state of the global heritage of illuminated manuscripts. At the same time it is a tool to be used in the evaluation of a collection’s general condition and in the establishing of conservation priorities for individual manuscripts. To enhance the database’s usefulness as a user-friendly tool for heritage policy it will be reproduced in book form in the course of the coming years and the data will also be made available online by Illuminare - Centre for the Study of Medieval Art.
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