Learn about Sebastian Gryphius, one of the most celebrated printers of sixteenth century Lyon, and about the books printed by him which are held by the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Gryphius printed Latin textbooks and works by humanist authors and was instrumental in divulging the ideas of the renaissance to Lyon and France.
Printed in Basel in 1543, Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica is considered to be the first "modern" medical book that emphasizes clinical observation over a dependence on ancient texts. The Library of Congress has recently digitized its copy of De Fabrica, which was part of the generous gift of Lessing J. Rosenwald to the nation.
Different personalities study best in different kinds of environments. The author of De Disciplina Scholarium, an early handbook for educators, advises about the optimal habits for different kinds of students, and who should reconsider their professional aspirations in education. He also writes under someone else's name.
Did the earliest printers know what print was? Book historian Anna Dlabacova, former fellow in the W. Kluge Center and senior university lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, offers some observations about what a 15th-century book from the Netherlands can teach us about culture and innovation.
Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, a tenth-century Saxon living in an abbey, wrote plays inspired by the classical author Terence at a time when it is typically thought that the classics had been forgotten or discarded.
Is that mermaid holding a mirror? No, and yes. The lower border of the January calendar page from this fifteenth-century illuminated Book of Hours contains a Siren, who is holding a mirror. What is a Siren? Why it is in this Book of Hours? Learn more in this New Years post.
The Edith Book of Hours from the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection is the smallest medieval manuscript at the Library of Congress. Created in Paris in the fourteenth century in the style of miniature painter and manuscript illuminator, Jean Pucelle, this tiny book offers researchers an experience like no other in the collection. Recently digitized, the Edith Book of Hours is now available for remote viewing for the first time. This blog post offers observations about the size of this manuscript in the hopes of providing remote researchers with a sense of its physical presence.
The Library of Congress has several important works by the printmaker, painter, and art theorist, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), including his famous engraving, Melencolia I (1514), and his Treatise on Measurement (1525).
In this post Haim Gottschalk, Hebraica-Judaica Cataloging Librarian for the Israel and Judaica Section of the Asian and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress, writes about the provenance of two Hebraic items in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
