The exhibition will be on display at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford through Dec. 13, 2025.

Submitted

The Art Museum at University of Saint Joseph (USJ) opened the exhibition Painted Pages: Illuminated Manuscripts, 13th – 18th Centuries with a reception on Sept. 18, and the exhibition will continue on view through Dec. 13.

Painted Pages, organized by the Reading Public Museum (Reading, PA) from its own collection, highlights the golden age of hand-written and illuminated volumes, many of which included elaborate gold leaf decoration and intricate ornamentation. Medieval European examples include a range of Christian devotional and liturgical texts – from psalters and books of hours to choir books and lectionaries. French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Flemish, English, and German pages are featured. Among the non-Western examples are 17th- and 18th-century leaves from the Koran and the Shahnameh (the Persian Illustrated Book of Kings) as well as Hebrew texts.

Highlights include a lavish bifolio from a Book of Hours with illuminations by Joachinus de Gigantibus de Rotenberg (German, active 1440s-1490s), a Perugian leaf from a fourteenth-century Dominican missal, a large bifolio from a 15th-century Spanish choir book, an 18th-century Hebrew scroll of the Book of Esther, a leather-bound Italian gradual containing the chants for the Mass (1720s), and a sumptuous 17th-century leaf from the Koran. Nearly all of the sheets in this exhibition came to the Reading Public Museum through Otto Ege, a well-known Cleveland-area bookseller and specialist who was born in Reading, PA.

Book of Hours with illuminations by Joachinus de Gigantibus de Rotenberg. Courtesy image

Most of these works were written in ink on parchment or vellum (animal skin). Painted Pages includes examples of these materials, as well as gold leaf and the mineral pigments artists used to embellish texts before the age of printed books.

At University of Saint Joseph, the presentation of Painted Pages is supported in part by the Karen L. Chase ‘97 Fund. The Art Museum at USJ will offer Family Day at the Museum on Saturday, Oct. 25, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. and a screening of the animated family fantasy film, The Secret of Kells (2009), on Sunday, Nov. 9 at 3 p.m.

The Art Museum at the University of Saint Joseph, an AAM accredited institution, is located in Bruyette Athenaeum on the University’s main campus at 1678 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford. The Museum presents regular exhibitions drawn from its permanent collections as well as loan exhibitions of historic art or of contemporary work by artists of national and international prominence. Public open hours are Tuesday through Saturday: 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; closed Monday, and Sunday. Admission is free. For more information, visit www.usj.edu/artmuseum.

Like what you see here? Click here to subscribe to We-Ha’s newsletter so you’ll always be in the know about what’s happening in West Hartford! Click the blue button below to become a supporter of We-Ha.com and our efforts to continue producing quality journalism.