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Cotton Genesis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Cotton Genesis (London, British Library, MS Cotton Otho B VI) was a 5th or 6th century Greek copy of the Book of Genesis. It was a luxury manuscript with many illuminations. It was one of the oldest illustrated biblical codices to survive to the modern period. Sadly, in 1731 it was largely destroyed in the Cotton library fire. All that remains are eighteen charred, shrunken scraps of vellum. The remnants of the miniatures show that the miniatures were framed and inserted within the text column and that they were executed in late antique style comparable to the Catacomb frescos.
110 scenes of mosaics in the atrium of the St Mark's Basilica in Venice were based directly on the miniatures of the Cotton Genesis, after the famous Byzantine manuscript was brought to Venice after the sack of Constantinople (1204). The mosaics were executed in the 1220s.
- Calkins, Robert G. Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983.
- Weitzmann, Kurt. Late Antique and Early Christin Book Illumination. New York: George Braziller, 1977.
