Last week, the Getty Museum acquired the Irmengard Codex, a richly decorated manuscript made for the 11th-century noblewoman Irmengard of Nellenburg –the niece of the Ottonian Emperor Henry II, member of the House of Egisheim-Dagsburg in Germany, and related to Pope Leo IX.
Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum, explained at the Museum’s website that “the Irmengard Codex, with its unusually rich body of imagery, is a spectacular example of early medieval manuscript illumination, the likes of which has not appeared on the market in over half a century.”
The Codex was created in Germany around mid-11th century, and it is mainly a collection of readings for the Mass. It also contains 15 full-page illuminations “executed in the otherworldly pinks, blues, and lavenders that characterize painting of the so-called long Ottonian era”.