The Medieval World at Our Fingertips: Manuscript Illuminations

This exhibition of nearly 30 manuscript illuminations travels through 400 years of the Middle Ages and across numerous countries in western Europe. Although often tiny in scale, these exquisite fragments from choir books, books of hours, and religious narratives offer a fascinating microcosm of medieval Europe, a world that extended from the sacred context of the great Gothic cathedrals to the cosmopolitan culture of the sunlit Italian courts.

This impressive and wide-ranging collection was assembled over a lifetime by Sandra Hindman. A noted medieval manuscript scholar and the founder of Les Enluminures, Hindman has generously given approximately one third of the exhibition’s illuminations to the Art Institute. The presentation celebrates her recent gift while also documenting her own journey as an innovative and imaginative teacher and student of the medieval book.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website 

IMAGE:  Masters of Zweder van Culembourg. Nehemiah before King Artaxerxes, initial ‘C’ from a Bible, c. 1430. Gift of Sandra Hindman

 Whether or not you go, you can bring the exhibition into your home. The exhibition catalogue, The Medieval World at Our Fingertips: Manuscript Illuminations, explores Sandra Hindman's thirty years of collecting perfect medieval miniatures which are the quintessence of their time. Each is a window which illuminates a world. The history of stained glass, architecture, fresco painting, tapestries and wood carving, as well as medieval literature, religion, music and romance, are all made slightly clearer and more focused by looking at the illuminated miniatures chosen for exhibition here. 

Every manuscript is part of the evolving history of European art and culture, and every one belongs to a place and period. The Sandra Hindman Collection is a remarkable journey through time and location. Every illuminated cutting described here is a microcosm of a larger history. A sublime initial from a twelfth-century Bible from France is part of a setting which includes Chartres Cathedral, the Crusades and Abelard; two late thirteenth-century narrative miniatures of saints from northern Italy have stepped from in a world inhabited by Giotto and Dante and the basilica of Santa Croce in Florence; a miniature by the Berlin Master of Mary of Burgundy belongs in age of Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling; a painting from a choir book by the Master B.F. can hold its place with Leonardo da Vinci and Palestrina. Manuscripts were always at the heart of intellectual and visual culture.

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