Library

Painting · Parmigianino

Parmigianino's Madonna with the Long Neck (1535) is a defining work of Mannerism, its elongated proportions and cool elegance a deliberate departure from High Renaissance balance.Crosses Mannerism × P

Painting · Limbourg Brothers

The Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (c. 1412-1416), the January calendar page shown here, is the supreme surviving Gothic illuminated manuscript.Crosses International Gothic × Painting × Christiani

Illuminated manuscript page (trecento Italian songbook) · Anonymous (Florentine workshop, c. 1410 to 1415)

This page from the Squarcialupi Codex (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Med. Pal. 87) is the opening folio of the section devoted to Francesco Landini, the blind Florentine organist who is th

Illuminated manuscript page (Gregorian chant notation) · Hartker of Sankt Gallen (Benedictine monk, c. 1000 CE)

This opening folio of the Antiphonary of Hartker depicts Pope Gregory I (the Great) seated at his writing desk with the dove of the Holy Spirit at his ear dictating the chants that, according to Carol

Illuminated manuscript page (Minnesinger songbook) · Anonymous (Zürich workshop, c. 1304 to c. 1340)

This page from the Codex Manesse (Heidelberg University Library, Cod. Pal. germ. 848) depicts the Middle High German poet Walther von der Vogelweide in the conventional posture of contemplative compos

Illuminated manuscript page (visionary illustration) · Anonymous (12th-century illuminator working under Hildegard's direction)

This illumination from Hildegard von Bingen's Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works), composed between 1163 and 1173, is among the most reproduced of the visionary illustrations the abbess prod

Sacred Text (printed scroll, world's earliest dated printed book) · Anonymous (Tang-dynasty Chinese printer, 11 May 868 CE)

This is the frontispiece and opening text of the Diamond Sutra preserved as a complete printed scroll dated 11 May 868 CE, the world's earliest known dated printed book and one of the most important a

Sacred Text (first edition title page) · Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The title page of the 1818 first edition of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published anonymously in three volumes by Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones. The novel was Mary Shelley

Engraving · Gustave Doré

From the 1863 illustrated edition of Cervantes's Don Quixote, this Doré engraving shows Don Quixote in his library surrounded by chivalric romances, the books that have driven his imagination into the

Sacred Text (manuscript) · Anonymous (Anglo-Saxon scribe, c. 10th-11th century)

The opening folio of the only surviving manuscript of Beowulf, Cotton Vitellius A.xv at the British Library. The poem was composed at some point between the 8th and 11th centuries; the manuscript copy

Autobiographical / theological prose · Augustine of Hippo

Augustine wrote the Confessions in Latin between 397 and 400 CE, in his early forties, while he was Bishop of Hippo Regius in Roman North Africa. The work is thirteen books long, structured as a susta

Drama (Stück) · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The monologue that opens Faust is one of the rare moments in Western drama where a play stakes its entire premise on a single character's exhaustion. Heinrich Faust has mastered philosophy, jurisprude

Poem · Charles Baudelaire

I have come back to this poem more often than to any other in Les Fleurs du Mal, and I do not entirely know why. It is not the most ambitious in the book. It is not the most beautiful. The metaphor is

Sacred text (Italian narrative poem) · Dante Alighieri

The inscription above the gate of Hell is the most quoted passage in the Inferno, and the third line in particular has had a longer afterlife than the rest of the poem. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'

Kasteel Olt Stoutenburg · Gerry Halman

Video van een zelfgebouwd kasteel. Ik heb dit kasteel bezocht op 2 mei 2026. Met een rondleiding erbij. Ik had er nog nooit eerder wat van gehoord of gezien. Maar was zo onder de indruk van zijn verha

Provocative Book · Marquis de Sade

LEGER DES HEILS Geistesmahnung (Version Aryana) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcPocSB73yQ) FIRST LEGION CALLED Ad Hominem Eth HEmenegh from France or Epherenkheaya Control legion of Satan the Dic

Sacred Text · John Milton

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the