The Aberdeen Bestiary - on display, and online

As reported by Medievalists.net:

The Aberdeen Bestiary, a beautifully illustrated manuscript that dates back to the twelfth century and which once belonged to King Henry VIII, can now be seen by the public for the first time at the the University of Aberdeen...

Renowned for its exquisite illustrations and covered in gold leaf, the Aberdeen Bestiary is one of the best preserved books of its kind still in existence and offers an unrivalled insight into medieval manuscript production methods... “The Aberdeen Bestiary is one of the most lavish ever produced but it was never fully completed and so the edges of the pages were not finished and tidied up. This means that the tiny notes from those who created it still remain in the margins, revealing more to us about the method of production than most other surviving medieval books. The Aberdeen Bestiary is also extremely rare in having a ‘twin’, as it is widely believed to have been created in the same monastic scriptorium as the Ashmole Bestiary, held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. By comparing the two we can access an unparalleled amount of information about how the scribes and artists actually worked.”..

For those who can’t journey to Scotland to see the manuscript in person, they can still look at through the Aberdeen Bestiary website, where every page has been digitized.