illuminated

A folio from the Shah Tahmasp Shahnameh, one of the “finest illustrated manuscripts in existence” according to Sotheby’s, is expected to fetch between £4m and £6m at auction next month.The Shahnameh, also known as the Book of Kings, is an epic poem containing 50,000 rhyming couplets, telling the history of Persia’s rulers. It was written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between 977 and 1010.The folio up for auction was made for Shah Tahmasp of Persia in the 16th century. The manuscript was illustrated over the course of two…

When JS Bach composed the first instalment of his Well-Tempered Clavier it had a simple premise. Part compositional brainteaser, part circuit training for performers, the book includes one prelude and one fugue for each of the 12 keys in western tonality in their major and minor forms, to be played on whichever keyboard instrument was available.That instrument definitely wouldn’t have been a Steinway concert grand piano (yet to be invented in 1722). And Bach would presumably have been surprised to find a sizeable audience…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain New research led by the University of Cambridge is the first to take a detailed image of an unusual pocket of rock at the boundary layer with Earth's core, some three thousand kilometers beneath the surface. …