5th May, 2008

DAVID ADAMS

I’ve always found it a moving experience to look at something that was created hundreds of years ago and a recent visit to the State Library of Victoria to take a look at The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand exhibition was no exception. Magnificently detailed and decorated, these sumptuous pages - which come from texts ranging from huge hymnbooks through to tiny private psalters and didatic science books - speak of another age when people would spend months working on the books which were treasured not just as repositories of knowledge but as status symbols and acts of worship in themselves. One can’t help but wonder about the lives of the monks and scribes who penned and decorated these books with pictures illustrating the lives of saints, Bible stories and vignettes of daily life as well as images such as maps and anatomical drawings. And about the lives of those they were made for? What were they thinking as they read or sang these texts? How did the images they contain speak to them? How differently do these manuscripts speak to me? More than 90 manuscripts originating from across Europe are featured in the exhibition which spans a period between the 8th and 16th centuries. The lighting is kept deliberately low to protect the pages but this only beckons you to take a closer look, a rewarding experience which delivers details not obvious at first glance. If the kids get bored (and yes, they may), there are activities for them - including the chance to dress up in some medieval gear - in a nearby room. The exhibition is free-of-charge and runs until 15th June. Well worth a visit.

~ www.slv.vic.gov.au/goto/medieval

BELOW: Historiated Initial from a Gradual, Italy, Venice, c. 1420, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Marlay Cutting It. 18 Reproduction by permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

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