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A colourful past: the art and science of illuminated manuscripts
One of the ways that the Fitzwilliam Museum is celebrating its 200th anniversary is by the staging of a splendid exhibition of illuminated manuscripts at the end of July – a very fitting tribute to its founder, reports Theresa Thompson
When Richard 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion died on the 4 February 1816 he bequeathed his entire collection of art, his books, music and illuminated manuscripts, along with £100,000 for the founding of ‘a good substantial Museum’ to his alma mater, the University of Cambridge. So it was that the Fitzwilliam Museum came into being and Viscount Fitzwilliam’s treasured illuminated manuscripts became the basis of a collection that today is described by Dr Stella Panayotova, Keeper of Manuscripts and Printed Books at the museum, as ‘second to none’.
The finest of those manuscripts, and some later acquisitions, are the subject of COLOUR: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manusc
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