Victoria & Albert Renaissance Treasure Trove

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London is usually a first destination for me due to their Medieval & Renaissance Galleries which has been open for just over a year through the help of funding from Heritage Lottery Fund and other private donors.

This beautifully spacious and light gallery which has three floors to explore, is positively bursting with wonderful artifacts and boasts the most important collection of Italian sculpture from the Renaissance outside of Italy with artists such as Donatello and Michelangelo and artifacts such as betrothal goblets, playing cards, tapestries and the Forster Codex Volumes of Leonardo da Vinci's note books and drawings.

Not only does the V&A Museum house all of these works of art from its own collections which span; European and the Islamic Mediterranean from 700-1600, Donatello in Florence to Women and the Renaissance and Renaissance & Medieval Jewellery, but it also holds a partnership with the British Library to 'show a changing selection of manuscripts from their collections'. The Museum's Medieval and Renaissance Blog explains:

Manuscripts were an important part of the artistic production of major churches at this time. Churches needed service books in order to better administer the liturgy. They copied scholarly texts for their libraries; and they produced charters and other administrative documents as well. The V&A’s collection of medieval manuscripts is comparatively small, and our works from this period tend to be individual leaves or fragments from much larger and grander works. We wanted to work with the British Library to help further contextualise the displays that visitors will see, and to juxtapose V&A objects with relevant manuscript materials

For more information on the V&A's Medieval and Renaissance collections and interactive features as well as information on short Art History courses that they offer please see the below links:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/periods_styles/medieval/new_med_ren_galleries/index.html

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1265_frost/

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/periods_styles/medieval/new_med_ren_galleries/m&r_galleries/renaissance_art_ideas_1400-1550/index.html

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/periods_styles/medieval/new_med_ren_galleries/m&r_galleries/splendour_society_1500-1600/index.html

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/periods_styles/medieval/Medieval_Renaissance_Links/index.html

http://www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/courses/courses/art_history_year_courses/index.html