u/Strange_Marginalia

This late 14th or early 15th-century South Netherlandish bronze aquamanile (object no. 1975.1.1416) is currently housed in the Robert Lehman Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Munich, Germany), Cgm 3711 (Jörg Wilhalm Hutters kunst zu Augspurg). Augsburg, Germany (after 1523).

Attributed to Robinet Testard, this detail from the Book of Hours of Charles d'Angoulême (c. 1485, BnF Ms. Lat. 1173) captures a rider dressed in full leafy gear for traditional May-month festivities.

Detail of a miniature of the Archangel Michael fighting a demon-like dragon, from Francisco de Ximenez’s Livre des anges, France (Tours), c. 1480, Sloane MS 3049, f. 115r.

Angers, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 808, f. 088v (Jacques de Voragine, Legenda aurea, 1367–1399).

Schürstab Codex (1472), Ms. C 54, f. 40r, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Ms. 95, folio 6r

​Handcrafted this cold-enameled brass pin based on the weird, smiling lion (or leucrota?) from a late 12th-century medical manuscript (De medicina ex animalibus, BL Sloane MS 1975). Fiber laser. Deep-engraved, hand-filled with ceramic enamel, wet-sanded, and polished in-house.

Jean Bourdichon (and/or workshop), Horae ad usum Parisiensem (Hours of Charles VIII), c. 1475–1500, illumination on parchment, Latin 1370, fol. 212v, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Department of Manuscripts.

The miniature shows Saint Denis, patron saint of Paris, carrying his head after being decapitated on Montmartre. Tradition says he walked six miles with it to the spot where the Basilica of Saint-Denis stands today.

Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF, Français 13096, fol. 87r)

Book of Hours. France, Paris, ca. 1425-1430. MS M.453 fol. 139r

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Source: Museo Correr (Venice)

Plates:

1. King of France
2. Duke of Normandy
3. King of Norway
4. King of Portugal
5. King of Poland
6. King of Sweden
7. King of Scotland
8. Duke of Bavaria
9. King of England
10. Holy Roman Emperor

Source: Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris (BnF, Ms. 4790)

Brass. Fiber laser. Ceramic enamel.

A bit of background: Heimdallr is the guardian of the gods and the World Tree, keeping watch over Bifröst, the burning rainbow bridge that leads to Asgard.

He possesses the resounding golden horn, Gjallarhorn, whose blast will echo across all the nine realms to signal the onset of Ragnarök. Heimdallr is renowned for his keen senses: he can see for hundreds of leagues around, day or night, and his hearing is so acute that he can hear the grass grow from the earth and the wool grow on the backs of sheep.

Art: Bartolomé Bermejo’s painting Descent of Christ into Limbo (Davallament de Crist als Llimbs, c. 1475–1479) is part of the permanent collection of the National Art Museum of Catalonia (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya — MNAC).

Miniatures depicting the damned and demons writhing in hellfire from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur (The Book of the Vineyard of our Lord), an apocalyptic French manuscript produced for the Carthusians, c. 1450–1470 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 134, fols. 87r, 90v, 105v).

A miniature from the French translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's landmark 13th-century encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum (Livre des propriétés des choses), illuminated in Paris around 1447.