A web catalogue of a major collection of medieval illuminated manuscripts must aim to serve many different masters. Just like a published catalogue, it should provide information to anyone with a serious scholarly interest. Like a public exhibition, however, it should also be interesting and pleasurable to the occasional visitor, merely keen on finding pretty pictures.
Of course, we have tried to make the access to the underlying database of medieval illumination as transparant as possible. Therefore, the search screen will hold few surprises for those who are used to consulting catalogues on medieval manuscripts. Even so, it may still be useful for them to read at least part of this prologue. For those who have no experience with manuscript catalogues or with medieval art in general, these introductory paragraphs will certainly be useful, because we shall show something of the richess of the material. We hope that the type of information we describe here will stimulate you to explore the online catalogue which you will reach when you click search.