What is Manuscript Miniatures?

Manuscript Miniatures (manuscriptminiatures.com) is an image collection of miniatures depicting armoured figures from the medieval period. The miniatures are sourced from manuscripts created before 1450 in countries across Europe. If you are looking for reference images of medieval armour as it was actually drawn in period manuscripts, this site is built for exactly that purpose.

What the site covers

The collection focuses on armoured figures as they appear in manuscript illumination, not on surviving physical armour. That distinction matters: you are seeing how medieval artists depicted armour, clothing, and equipment, which is useful for costume research, art history, illustration reference, and understanding how armour was represented rather than only how it survived in museums.

According to the site's own description, miniatures come from manuscripts created before 1450 across European countries.

Resource categories

Beyond the main miniature collection, the site organizes related material into several browsable sections:

• Manuscript Miniatures — the core image collection of armoured figures
• Effigies & Brasses — funerary monuments and monumental brasses
• Aquamanilia — water vessels, typically in the form of animals or figures
• Armour in Art — broader depictions of armour in artistic works

These categories let you cross-reference how armour appears across different media rather than only in manuscript painting.

Scale of the collection

The site publishes running statistics on its holdings:

These numbers give a sense of the collection's breadth: it is not a handful of images but a substantial corpus drawn from over 1,500 manuscripts across 19 countries.

How the collection is organized

The site provides Search and Tags functions for navigating the images, plus an About page. A Miniature of the Day feature highlights a rotating example — for instance, BNF Français 22970 f2r, dated 1300–1320 from France.

Recent Additions shows newly added manuscripts with their shelfmarks, titles, dates, and countries of origin. Examples from the listing include:

• BC Ms. 459 Historia Plantarum, 1395–1400, Italy
• BNF Français 755 Roman de Tristan, 1320–1330, Italy
• GNM Hs998 History of the Trojan War, 1441, Germany
• BNF Français 829 Pèlerinage de vie humaine, 1390–1410, France
• BNF Arsenal 5069 Ovide moralisé, 1330, France
• BNF Latin 5286 (II) Vita et Passio Beati Dionysii, 1373–1415, France
• BNF Latin 8043 Bellum Civile, 1370–1380, Italy
• BSB Clm 14159 Dialogus de laudibus sanctae crucis, 1170–1180, Germany

Each entry pairs a library shelfmark with a title, a date range, and a country, so you can trace an image back to its source manuscript.

Who it is useful for

• Historical armour researchers wanting period depictions rather than modern reconstructions
• Art historians and students studying manuscript illumination before 1450
• Illustrators and reenactors needing visual reference for medieval armoured figures
• Anyone comparing how armour appears across miniatures, effigies, brasses, and other art forms

Practical notes

The site is an image collection, so browsing depends on the Search and Tags tools rather than a single linear index. If you know the manuscript shelfmark, title, or country you are interested in, those are the most direct ways in. The Recent Additions list is a good starting point if you want to see what has been added lately and get a feel for the range of sources.

The site footer indicates manuscriptminiatures.com has been running from 2010 to 2026.