Light

 

I was so glad that I made time before a lunchtime meeting at the chilly and misty Getty to go and see the wonderful Lumen show - medieval light, from Europe and North Africa.  Cosmology, astral systems, optics, light for illumination, divine light - it was all there.  A few highlights - impossible, really, to pick them out, but among many extraordinary illuminated manuscripts, Hildegard of Bingen's On the Construction of the World (there's Hildegard herself, in the lefthand corner, painting away);

the Flemish Tapestry of the Astrolabes - from Toledo - here's an angel turning a crank to operate an astrolabe, while God emanates light while directing the movement of the cosmos.

And here some Giotto angels - one looking through a glass, darkly, and the other two shielding their eyes from divine light with their hands.

Then lots of golden rays,

and contemporary reinterpretations of them - there were just a handful of contemporary works scattered among the older ones, like E. V. Day's Golden Rays/In Vitro ...