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The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online

openculture.com

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Re: The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online

#51

Post by gambiting »

CalRobert wrote: post #3

The book of Kells is gorgeous and well worth a visit. If you are in Dublin and enjoy this sort of thing, _please_ also take the very short walk over to the Chester Beatty Library ( https://chesterbeatty.ie/ ) as well. It's free and has an absolutely fantastic collection of ancient and sacred manuscripts. I was lucky enough to live across the street from it for several years and it remains one of my favourite museums…

I saw it in person few months ago, and well......it's weird. The quality of the caligraphy and drawings is such that when you see it in person...it's completely underwhelming. It just looks like a very high quality print - which obviously speaks volumes about the quality of penmanship of something that is so crazy old. But the presentation room where the pages were shown magnified and the library afterwards were(to me) 100x more interesting than the "main event". I just saw it, went "huh" and that was about it. I guess seeing Mona Lisa in person must be similar - hundreds of people trying to take a peek, and it's far away from you behind glass so you can't really appreciate the details.

Re: The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online

#52

Post by fullstop »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #44
bdz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to everyone I think it was pretty mediocre. The significance of the book is barely covered and the contents of it are not mentioned at all. The story itself is dancing around the “message of the book” and how it prevails over everything (see the allegory with the abbey’s wall) but somehow they just never say it’s the four Gospels of the New Testament which are the most important texts of Christianity. If you…

Yes. As someone who practices Western calligraphy, I expected a lot more about the book from the movie. It was mostly style kind of fable with the book as a prop.

Have you played Pentiment?

Re: The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online

#53

Post by _yb2s »

CalRobert wrote: post #3

The book of Kells is gorgeous and well worth a visit. If you are in Dublin and enjoy this sort of thing, _please_ also take the very short walk over to the Chester Beatty Library ( https://chesterbeatty.ie/ ) as well. It's free and has an absolutely fantastic collection of ancient and sacred manuscripts. I was lucky enough to live across the street from it for several years and it remains one of my favourite museums…

I stayed at a dorm on campus for a week at Trinity, but the book was so popular I couldn’t bring myself to wait in the long line to see it… but wish I had.

Re: The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online

#54

Post by hackernewds »

s_dev wrote: post #6

The animated film 'The Secret of Kells' is great and well worth a watch. Far more accessible/relatable to modern audiences than this historical Bible that was dug up in a field in Kells. I'm glad it got a mention but the other guy is right -- the link should have been to the digitized book.

guy or girl*

Re: The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online

#55

Post by hackernewds »

CosmicShadow wrote: post #17

I saw the real life Book of Kells earlier this year and it was so pristine and high quality it didn't look real, like seriously looked like a modern fancy reprint, it was a bit confusing!

anyone have a link? I couldn't find a good quality photo

Re: The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online

#56

Post by hackernewds »

UberFly wrote: post #40

I believe the book was stolen at one point and the gold covers were ripped off. It was eventually found buried. Close to being gone for good like so many other remarkable items.

How does it still look so modern and pristine then?

Re: The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online

#57

Post by hackernewds »

g40694 wrote: post #20
mistrial9 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why even go looking at the book of kells ... etc

why even go looking at the book of kells is the sentiment about the deliberate versus knee jerk information consumption, which was prompted by the reflection on the levels of ugliness and indignity supporting the knew jerk consumption. it wasn't a comment on the value of book of kells, or the effort of making it available to the public.

I think you're being purposefully obtuse now. the Internet is a free resource

Re: The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online

#58

Post by Isamu »

gambiting wrote: post #51
CalRobert wrote: post #3

The book of Kells is gorgeous and well worth a visit. If you are in Dublin and enjoy this sort of thing, _please_ also take the very short walk over to the Chester Beatty Library ( https://chesterbeatty.ie/ ) as well. It's free and has an absolutely fantastic collection of ancient and sacred manuscripts. I was lucky enough to live across the street from it for several years and it remains one of my favourite museums…

I saw it in person few months ago, and well......it's weird. The quality of the caligraphy and drawings is such that when you see it in person...it's completely underwhelming. It just looks like a very high quality print - which obviously speaks volumes about the quality of penmanship of something that is so crazy old. But the presentation room where the pages were shown magnified and the library afterwards were(to m…

Opposite reaction from me. Every print seemed lackluster when I finally saw the original. Which is surprisingly smaller than expected. And the intricacies are incredibly tiny.

Something about the work is more vibrant in person. I found the same to be true about Da Vinci. In particular his silverpoint drawings can’t be reproduced well.

Re: The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online

#59

Post by stogot »

grujicd wrote: post #13
CalRobert wrote: post #3

The book of Kells is gorgeous and well worth a visit. If you are in Dublin and enjoy this sort of thing, _please_ also take the very short walk over to the Chester Beatty Library ( https://chesterbeatty.ie/ ) as well. It's free and has an absolutely fantastic collection of ancient and sacred manuscripts. I was lucky enough to live across the street from it for several years and it remains one of my favourite museums…

Chester Beatty is a gem. I went into it not expecting much from "museum of books". But it's also in a way a museum of world's religions, which are tightly connected to writing and books. As an atheist who has low opinion on value of religion because of all the deaths they were and still are responsible for, it reminded me of their positive role in history. When you see all those ancient religious books you begin to q…

The idea that religion causes more deaths than non-religion is absurd in the 21st history (hitler, Stalin, mao) and is a myth when you take in full world history.

An index of all known wars in history indicated 93% of wars were not religious.

https://apholt.com/2023/01/03/the-myth-of-religion-as-the-ca...

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