A sumptuously illustrated book presenting the highlights of Renaissance court treasures, bequeathed to the British Museum by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, MP in 1898.

The Waddesdon Bequest is a collection of nearly 300 precious art objects from Renaissance Europe. It was bequeathed to the British Museum by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, M.P., when he died in 1898. The Bequest is named after Waddesdon Manor, the mansion he built in Buckinghamshire, England, where the collection was housed during his lifetime. The collection was accumulated by Baron Ferdinand and by his father, Baron Anselm, and was intended to rival those put together by rulers and princes from the Renaissance onwards. It is mainly made up of small-scale, rare and precious pieces of the highest quality which were intended to inspire a sense of curiosity and wonder.

Excerpt from The Waddesdon Bequest: Catalogue of the Works of Art Bequeathed to the British Museum by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild, M. P. 1898 The bulk of the present collection consists of such objects as would have been used or worn by the princes or wealthy merchants of Germany, and helps to illustrate the stories of the wealth and luxury enjoyed by the merchant princes of such towns as Nurnberg or Augsburg in the sixteenth century. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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