The Agony in the Garden, from Book of hours, about 1420, Paris, Spitz Master. The J. Paul Getty Museum.

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Things Unseen: Vision, Belief, and Experience in Illuminated Manuscripts

by Archaeology Newsroom - Monday, 1 August 2016

Drawn primarily from the Getty Museum’s permanent collection of manuscripts, this exhibition explores the visual challenges artists faced as they sought to render miraculous encounters with the divine, grand visions of the end of time, the intricacies of belief, and the intimate communications of prayer. These “unseen” spiritual experiences, recorded by Jewish and Christian authors in antiquity, were translated in new ways by the illuminators of medieval and Renaissance books. Rather than simply narrating otherworldly events, the innovative images in this exhibition offer visual entry points to the ineffable nature of faith.