Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

Responses by Marie-Pierre Dion, library conservator, advisor and shopper, Château de Chantilly.

Qualifications: Made between 1412 and 1416, the Très Riches Heures de Duc de Berry is a ebook of hrs that functions outstanding performs of art as manuscript illuminations. Because its acquisition by the Henri d’Orléans, the Duke of Aumale, in 1856, the e book has develop into an legendary example of medieval European artwork. But like all sure manuscripts, the Très Riches Heures cannot be offered in its entirety: only two webpages can be observed concurrently. Nor can the Très Riches Heures be completely exhibited for conservation factors as polices restrict the manuscript’s exhibition time to 3 months every five decades. As part of the renovation of the library of the Château de Chantilly, exactly where the manuscript is stored, we took the opportunity to build mediation and presentation resources that equaled the get the job done of art’s mastery. As section of a vast software that bundled a digital pictures campaign, a digital leaflet and interactive set up by experiential interactive design and style studio Mosquito at the Château, this website by Mosquito and electronic structure studio 23Ahead puts a multilingual version of the Très Riches Heures set up on the website.

Style main: The internet site characteristics a sober structure with blacked-out reviews that help emphasize the masterpiece’s artwork. A fluid navigation system makes sure that the consumer does not have to wait around as 420 substantial-definition photos load at about 11 MB for each website page and 22 MB for each double page. The software would make the construction of the guide, the articles of the texts and the that means of the pictures comprehensible many thanks to bookmarks and captions with a obvious, discreet focus. Lastly, the web page facilitates interactions for end users and enables them the probability of writing messages in the menu.

Troubles: We had to generate a flawlessly responsive website to house the unprecedented image quality of the Très Riches Heures’s artwork that would empower the public to learn not known facts. The illustrations or photos, made with a camera and not a scanner for conservation explanations, are more than 10,000-pixels-broad every single. What is a lot more, we had to make absolutely sure that the web site was simple to recognize technically—with no support web site needed—and that it would present scholarly content in an effortlessly digestible structure to reach the broadest attainable viewers. Also, the narrowness of the smartphone monitor created it required to double the bottom navigation line with a menu on the site’s mobile variation.

Certain challenge calls for: We experienced to make certain that the high-excellent illustrations or photos were being guarded less than the copyright of the lover photographic agency, so no downloading of pictures is probable. We prepare to unveil minimal-definition or partial photos for customers to share on social media.

Navigation framework: The strategy to the navigation composition was to make the website truly feel like a normal browsing knowledge as if end users have been flipping as a result of the genuine manuscript. We did so by creating a progressive discovery of the book’s facts during the internet pages.

The fidelity of Très Riches Heures is always shown in its entirety. We carried out a site-mode navigation on a vertical smartphone with a captioned, illustrated label showing two webpages opposite just about every other. There are also page layout games that need this perspective. On a horizontal monitor, we feature a double-web site navigation with commentary labels.

Technology: Coded in HTML5, PHP and JavaScript and using an open up-source again finish identified as SPIP, the web page can be scaled for the probability of our library applying this kind of an application for other manuscripts in the long run.

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