β: This is a Beta release of the Fitzwilliam Museum's potential new website.
We want to co-design
our Virtual Museum presence with you.
You can return to our current site at any time.
Following the Government announcement yesterday, museums and galleries in Cambridge will be closed to the public as part of a period of national/local restrictions. So, with great sadness, we will not be able to reopen as planned on 2 January 2021.
This resource is designed to show the conservation work which was carried out on MS 251, from the initial decision-making process through the conservation of the leaves to the eventual rebinding, a project which took 214 hours to complete.
Fitzwilliam Museum MS 251, a copy of the encyclopaedia 'Livre des propriétés des choses', is a lavish manuscript produced in Paris in 1414 and illuminated by one of the leading artists of the day, the Master of the Mazarine Hours.