I saw it in person few months ago, and well......it's weird. The quality of the caligraphy and drawings is such that when you see it in person...it's completely underwhelming. It just looks like a very high quality print - which obviously speaks volumes about the quality of penmanship of something that is so crazy old. But the presentation room where the pages were shown magnified and the library afterwards were(to me) 100x more interesting than the "main event". I just saw it, went "huh" and that was about it. I guess seeing Mona Lisa in person must be similar - hundreds of people trying to take a peek, and it's far away from you behind glass so you can't really appreciate the details.
Opposite reaction from me. Every print seemed lackluster when I finally saw the original. Which is surprisingly smaller than expected. And the intricacies are incredibly tiny.
Something about the work is more vibrant in person. I found the same to be true about Da Vinci. In particular his silverpoint drawings can’t be reproduced well.
It’s a bit like looking at the sky with your own telescope after seeing the Hubble images. You need superhuman senses - such as the magnified images and the extensive explanations in the museum - to really appreciate some things.
The library is iconic. Too bad we can’t borrow the books it has without at least a tenure and a few PhDs in history and literature.
