Light of the West 

Exhibition Presentation

The art of illumination experienced quite remarkable development in the West throughout the Middle Ages until the invention of printing in the 15th century sounded its death knell.

An immoderate love of books, a spirituality essentially based on meditation of the Scriptures, or lectio divina, and the distribution of Books of Hours which contained the offices of the day and were often illuminated—these are, among others, some reasons that explain this quite unique development.

The image in the Western Christian area, marked by a moderate original iconoclasm, unlike the Eastern icon offered for the veneration of the faithful, most often aimed to magnify the text and accompany the meditation and devotion of the believer. In the 6th century, to correct the violently iconoclastic attitude of Serenus, Bishop of Marseille, Pope Gregory the Great wrote a letter in which he established, undoubtedly unwittingly, what would become the rule in how the Western Church would envision the role of the image: to teach the ignorant, to commemorate the events of Salvation, and to lead the faithful to contemplation of divine realities. A true visual commentary, illumination would progressively free itself from iconographic canons imported from the East to conquer a freedom, even a fantasy, that would favor its secularization.

The exhibition "Light of the West" aims to introduce visitors to this disappeared art, often unknown, which nevertheless left a major imprint on the history of imagery in Europe, through about thirty illuminations—copies of remarkable pages extracted from medieval manuscripts.