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Illuminated Manuscripts: Resources and Facsimiles: Digital Facsimiles

A guide to researching illuminated manuscripts and how to locate manuscript facsimiles in the Sloane Art Library.

About digital facsimiles

While digital facsimiles don't provide the same depth of information and experience as a physical facsimile, these online resources can help supplement our collections. These are not digitized copies of facsimiles in Sloane's collection, but rather, resources for further research.

Some of the resources listed, such as the Virtual Books page from the British Library, are the digital equivalents of true facsimiles: they include all pages and the cover, and can be "flipped through" similarly to the physical action of turning a page.  Others are simpler, but all contain full-color scans of every page of their listed manuscripts, unless otherwise noted.

Digital facsimiles

Qur'an Manuscript Folio

The opening page of a Qur’an, with verses written in Arabic on a gold ground in the center, surrounded by illuminated borders with ornamentation in colors and gold with scrolling vines, blossoms, lozenges, and cartouches.

Qur'an Manuscript Folio, 1500s, Afghanistan, Herat, Safavid period (1501 - 1722), ink, gold, and colors on paper, Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art