The Giant Bible of Mainz is richly decorated with decorative and illuminated images, which appear in the first thirty-one leaves of the manuscript. Illumination is the process used to add gold to initials, borders, or entire pages.

Explore the decoration in this Bible by looking for the following:

Decorated initials (non-figural decorative initials)

Historiated initials (decorative initials that include a scene and/or figures, sometimes related to the accompanying text)

Illuminated initials

Decorative penwork

Decorated borders

Recent research reveals that the images in this Bible could be based on those found in artists' model books that circulated all over Europe during the mid-fifteenth century.