This superbly illustrated volume is devoted to the codices in the Sacristy of the Sistine Chapel, which were dispersed during the French occupation of Rome in 1798 and largely dismembered and stripped of their miniatures. As a result, the various fragments are now scattered among public and private collections all over the world.

The discovery of a group of perfectly preserved codices in Toledo enabled historians to recreate one of the most important and valuable ensembles of liturgical manuscripts belonging to the papal bibliographic heritage.  A systematic analysis of the manuscript illustrations, cuttings and loose sheets has made it possible to reconstruct both the illustrative output of the papal scriptorium of the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries and the refined artistic production of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Rome resulting from the patronage of popes and cardinals.

The volume is the catalogue of the exhibition held at the Biblioteca Nacional de España and Meadows Museum de Dallas to show the public the illuminated treasures in the Sistine codices of Toledo and Madrid.

Elena De Laurentiis teaches History of Art at the University of Genoa and has published important research including many discoveries in the field of Spanish and Italian illuminated manuscripts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Emilia Anna Talamo is Professor of History of Art at the University of Calabria. Since 1987 her research and most important publications deal with Roman illuminated manuscripts from the sixteenth through the twentieth century.