| |
Audio Tour
Get more out of your visit to the The Medieval Imagination exhibition by taking our audio tour, narrated by the exhibition curator Professor Emeritus Margaret Manion AO.
Accessing the audio
The audio tour consists of 10 mp3 files. You can access the audio online in three ways:
- Listen online now - Click on any 'Listen to...' link to go direct to our in-page media player and listen to individual audio tour sections at your computer.
- Subscribe to the podcast and listen later - Use the link under the 'Subscribe' heading on the right-hand side of our audio pages to automatically download the entire 10-part audio tour. Listen at your computer or transfer the files to a portable device and listen while viewing the exhibition.
- Download the audio files manually and listen later - Right-click on any 'Listen to...' or 'Download...' link and choose Save to download individual audio files.
The entire 10-part tour lasts approximately 29 minutes, or you can listen to selected sections - most are around three minutes.
If you don't have access to an mp3 player, a small number of iPods with the audio tour already pre-loaded are available for temporary loan free of charge while visiting the exhibition. See the Library's Front Foyer Desk for more information.
Hear the history behind the decorative patterns and text of pages from the Gospels of St Luke and St John, one of the few surviving Gospel books made by missionary monks in England. They include a medieval spelling mistake!
Discover the meanings behind the evangelist symbols featured in the Glossed Gospels. The fine initials, executed in gold and costly pigments, in this Gospel book are characteristic of the high-quality work found in books made for St Albans Abbey.
Listen to the legend behind the illustration of St Dominic and the ladder to heaven in the Antiphonal-hymnal. This choir book was made for the nuns of St Louis de Poissy, a Dominican monastery founded by King Philip IV in 1304.
Discover the meanings behind the artist's composition for this 13th-century Italian Antiphonal, which are based on legends popular in Byzantium and Italy. This splendid manuscript contains the music and chants of the Office from Christmas to Epiphany.
Learn about the symbolism of the half-page miniatures and historiated initials in this Psalter. It was probably made for Mary de Bohun, daughter of the Earl of Hereford and Essex, for her marriage to Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, in 1380.
Hear about the decorative richness, bright and colourful palette and complex and lively approach to narrative, which characterise the Bedford Breviary present in this miniature of the Flight into Egypt, from this 15th-century Book of Hours (Use of Paris).
Discover the illustration and history behind the opening chapter of Ptolemy's 'Almagest', which argues that only mathematics yields certain knowledge; yet, study of astronomy, the highest part of mathematics, can lead to the understanding of God.
Bestiaries (medieval book of beasts) describe, and provide theological and moral interpretations of, familiar, exotic and fabulous creatures. Discover the strange beliefs that were bestowed on the elephant in medieval times, as shown in this example.
Listen to how the young Master of the Cite des Dames' confident modelling of form, subtle use of colour and the tiled floors and angled objects of his interiors for Livy's 'Histoire Romaine' herald later Parisian illumination.
Hear how recent scholarship on 'Scriptores Historiae Augustae' ('The Augustan History') provides intriguing insights into the Medici family. This high Renaissance manuscript was made for Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1479 and is still in its original binding.
|
|
