A long-planned feature for the Medieval History Database is a WebGL-based method to display accurate gilding effects for scanned medieval illuminated manuscripts,
given that photographs or scans do not give any impression of light reflecting off gilded areas. Most people have therefore never seen what medieval gilded artwork
actually looks like. The effect of seeing such artwork in person is often powerful: one of the staff members at St. John's University literally gasped and blinked
back tears when seeing a page of gilded lettering in the illuminated Bible which St. John's commissioned a few years ago.
The video below demonstrates the rendering effects for several sample items: