Global InformationLiuthar Gospels information
The Liuthar Gospels (also Gospels of Otto III[1] or Ottonian Gospels) are a work of Ottonian illumination which are counted among the masterpieces of the period known as the Ottonian Renaissance. The manuscript, named after a monk called Liuthar, was probably created around the year 1000 at the order of Otto III at the Abbey of Reichenau and lends its name to the Liuthar Group of Reichenau illuminated manuscripts. The backgrounds of all the images are illuminated in gold leaf, a seminal innovation in western illumination.
After the French Revolution, the manuscript fell to private property and was only returned in 1848.[2]
Today the Gospels belong to the Aachen Cathedral Treasury, and along with the Carolingian Gospels they form one of the two especially significant and valuable manuscripts kept there. In 2003 the manuscript was included by UNESCO in the Memory of the World Programme, along with other, later works of the Reichenau School.
- ^ But this name is usually reserved for a different illuminated gospel book kept in Munich.
- ^ Herta Lepie, Georg Minkenberg, Die Schatzkammer des Aachener Domes, Brimberg, Aachen 1995, ISBN 3-923773-16-1, p. 60.