Custom Clothes: Medieval Woodcuts

Medieval Woodcuts

Here is a collection of medieval clipart culled from various period sources, most notably woodcuts of the 15th & 16th centuries. These pictures are all in .JPG format. In many cases the sizes of the pictures are rather large; this has been done to keep image quality at a maximum. Those who wish to reduce or alter these images for their own use are welcome to do so. They can be made into wonderful transparent .GIF's, as can be seen below.Non-commercial use of these images is encouraged. As a courtesy, it would be appreciated that any website which uses pictures featured in the Medieval Woodcuts Clipart Collection include a link back to this site. Sites which use these images should contact the webmaster for a reciprocal link from this site, which will be listed here.There is some kind of connection between the harp and the culture of the Celtic peoples, or so it seems, to many of us; is this connection due to the fact that the triangular frame harp was invented, or at least more fully developed by the Irish (or by the Scots, as it has been claimed)? The answer to this question has yet to be settled; what is certain, though, is that the harp has had a connection to Celtic lands and stories in the imaginations of Europeans for centuries, a connection extending back before the Irish Literary Renaissance, before O'Carolan and the itinerant and court harpers of Ireland and Scotland. We cannot know when the great harping traditions of the Celts first began-do they extend all the way back to the "stringed instruments" played by the ancient bards, as the Latin and Greek authors recorded? We can say with certainty, however, that in European culture of the Middle Ages there was already a strong notion that the masters of the harp and its music were the Celtic peoples.