Conference: ‘Multispectral Gaze: New Approaches to the Cotton Genesis’, British Library, 19 June 2026

The British Library recently undertook a new multispectral digitisation campaign of the Cotton Genesis (British Library, Cotton MS Otho B VI), one of the greatest works of manuscript art to survive from late Antiquity and one of the most tragic casualties of the Cotton Library fire of 1731. The new imagery made visible parts of the manuscript unseen since the fire. Pages that look black to the naked eye now reveal portions of readable texts; illuminations that look like blocks of colour now show layers of paint, brush strokes, and fold outlines. This opens exciting opportunities for new research on this manuscript, which is a significant witness both of an influential late-antique visual tradition and of the text of the Septuagint.

 The British Library will celebrate the launch of the multispectral images of the Cotton Genesis on its website with an interdisciplinary conference fully dedicated to the manuscript: Multispectral Gaze: New Approaches to the Cotton Genesis.

View the full programme and register here.

Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections (AMARC).

Thanks to support from AMARC, five free student tickets are available. To apply, please contact  elena.lichmanova@bl.uk and e.zingg@hist.uzh.ch.