L'art Du Livre

At the crossroads of skills and knowledge, matter and spirit, the art of the book is a polyphonic art. Indian or Tibetan sheet manuscripts, Mesopotamian clay tablets, silk, paper, papyrus or leather scrolls, stitched parchment notebooks... Books have crossed every culture. After more than forty centuries of existence, it seems to have lost none of its lustre, and its history is part of the history of the arts.

This book brings together masterpieces from the world's greatest libraries and from private institutions. It takes the form of a vast chronological overview from Antiquity to the present day, and raises the question of the definition of the book object, its forms and its evolution in Western civilisation. Before turning to the printed book and its many forms up to the present day, the production of medieval manuscripts (copyists, illuminators) is studied in depth.