
The first East Slavic copy of the Bible, “Gennadievsky”, was written in Novgorod Veliky in 1499 and was very modestly decorated The book was written in semi-uncial font and decorated with one headband and small cinnabar initials.
The corpus of richly ornamented Bibles created in Belarus in 1502-1507 is the finest sample of a Cyrillic book art. The book calligraphic design is gorgeous, and the only miniature in the book represents the subject of Sophia’s (God’s Wisdom) personification. The manuscript of Matvei Ivanovich (Matvei Desyatov), called “Desyatoglav”, is now kept at the Academy of Science at Vassilievsky Island in St Petersburg.