"Lumen" Dazzles

Gentile da Fabriano, The Stigmatization of Saint Francis, about 1420. Magnani-Rocca Foundation, Parma

"Lumen: The Art and Science of Light" is the Getty Center's marquee PST ART show. It offers a well-calibrated narrative of how the evolving medieval science of light informed art, told with a succession of once-in-a-lifetime loans. The time frame is 800 to 1600 C.E.; the cultures are Catholic, Byzantine, Jewish, and Islamic; and the media encompass illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, mosque lamps, gold-ground paintings, gilt and silver objects, rock crystal, and astrolabes. If you must have big names, it's got some, from Giotto to Anish Kapoor. But most of the truly great pieces are either anonymous or by now-obscure artists and artisans. 

Stavelot Retable, about 1160-70. Musée de Cluny, Paris. Photo by Lawrence Lew

That starts with the Stavelot Retable, an 1160-70 copper gilt relief made in today's Belgium and now owned by Paris' medieval museum, the Musée de Cluny. Such works epitomize the stagecraft of medieval devotion, in which the play of light and color invited the faithful to consider a world beyond their everyday lives. The retable is shown on a 2-1/2 minute cycle of lighting, to suggest how its effect varied through the medieval day.

"Lumen" reunites the Getty's Gentile da Fabriano Coronation of the Virgin with its flipside, The Stigmatization of Saint Francis (top of post), now in the Magnani-Rocca Foundation, Parma. The two paintings were opposite faces of a processional standard to be carried through the streets on feast days. Sometime before 1827 they were separated to maximize resale value, and they ended up in museums on opposite sides of the globe. 

The gallery label proposes that Gentile optimized the two sides for different lighting conditions. The Parma Saint Francis was made to dazzle in full sunlight, while the Los Angeles Coronation was intended for the flickering lamplight of a church.

'Abd al-Karim al-Misri, Astrolabe with Lunar Mansions, 624-25 AH/1227-28 CE. History of Science Museum, University of Oxford. Image © History of Science Museum, University of Oxford

Medieval Islamic science is one of the show's protagonists. Islamic scholars were early to understand reflection, refraction, and the secrets of the rainbow. Ibn al-Haytham (known as Alhazen in the West) established the science of optics through experiments with a camera obscura. Roger Bacon, Galileo, and Newton were aware of Alhazen's work in translation. They took from it not only specific ideas about light but the spirit of evidence-based empiricism we know as science. Optics was no less the basis of perspective, whose study helped launch the Italian Renaissance.

Though the astrolabe was an ancient Greco-Egyptian invention, it became a vehicle for visual splendor as well as science in the Islamic world. An astrolabe is both a celestial map and a microcosm. Astronomer Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī listed a thousand applications, including identifying stars, determining the local time or latitude, identifying the direction of Mecca for prayer, and establishing lunar calendar-based religious holidays such as Ramadan. For the wealthy, astrolabes became canvases for deluxe metalwork techniques. The exhibition's last room includes a spectacular Flemish Tapestry of the Astrolabes from Toledo's cathedral. God and an angel turn the dials of an astrolabe representing both cosmos and human comedy. 

On the Construction of the World, in Book of Divine Works by Saint Hildegard of Bingen, about 1210-40. Biblioteca Statale di Lucca. By permission of the Ministero della Cultura – Biblioteca Statale di Lucca.

Illuminated manuscripts use gleaming gold leaf and drawn rays of light to suggest divine enlightenment. The show has many spectacular examples, including an opening from the Book of Divine Works of Saint Hildegard of Bingen. Two Jewish manuscripts on view present full-page gold menorahs as a symbol of light, culture, and wisdom.

Menorah from Rothschild Pentateuch, 1296. Getty Museum 

Attributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans, The Glorification of the Virgin, about 1490-95. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

The show's most amazing painting is also its smallest. Barely 10 inches high, a Glorification of the Virgin attributed to Haarlem painter Geertgen tot Sint Jans presents Mary in an orb of heavenly light. She is surrounded by the instruments of the passion and, in the dimmer reaches, music-making angels. The painting includes many of the earliest depictions of musical instruments in Netherlandish art. It was part of a diptych with a Passion of Christ now in Edinburgh. 

A small contingent of contemporary works includes a Fred Eversley lens and a Vija Celmins starscape. Located elsewhere on campus are light installations by Helen Pashgian and Charles Ross. The popular hit among the contemporary pieces is Anish Kapoor's Non-Object Black (2018). It's a lozenge-shaped pyramid painted in Vantablack, a matte pigment that absorbs 99.965 percent of incident light. The paint turns anything 3D into a superflat silhouette. 

"Lumen: The Art and Science of Light" is at the Getty Center through Dec. 8, 2024.

Installation view of Flemish Tapestry of the Astrolabes, about 1400-1450. Photo: Michael Juliano