ART REVIEW : A Light on Flemish Illuminations

Illuminated manuscripts--once produced exclusively in monasteries to preserve Christian texts--oozed into the community at large in the 12th Century. They were made in budding universities and by guilds of painters and scribes who crafted sumptuous personal prayer books, illustrated fables, histories or psalters for the rich.

By the 15th and 16th centuries, the Flemish banking and textile centers of Bruges and Ghent--with their merchant class and bibliophile rulers, the powerful Dukes of Burgundy--had become particularly fertile seedbeds for some of the most accomplished and innovative examples of Northern manuscript illumination.

This so-called Golden Age of Flemish illuminated manuscripts is the subject of an intimate, treasure-packed exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum through Oct. 16. “Flemish Illumination in the Late Middle Ages” is a 15-piece exhibition drawn mainly from the renowned Ludwig cache purchased by the Getty in 1983.

The qualities that inspire awe for such great Flemish painters as Jan van Eyck and Hugo van der Goes--dramatic light, vibrant color, encyclopedic attention to naturalistic detail and a gentle humanism that contrasted Northern art from the more classical art of Italy--are in these exquisite illuminations.

A “Trinity” attributed to a follower of Van Eyck and dated 1450 seems lit by an internal source that penetrates an angel’s translucent wings and reveals God as a kindly, robed upper statesman, much like the same figure in Van Eyck’s Ghent altarpiece. A superlative 1474 work by Simon Marmion illustrates a popular fable about the rich and hedonistic nobleman Tondal, who falls into a coma and is taken by an angel through the torments of hell.

Considered one of the masters of Flemish illumination, Simon Bening (circa 1525) illuminated the prayer book of the influential art patron Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg. The page in the show, “Denial of Saint Peter,” is an expressionistic rendition with a vulnerable Peter dressed in brilliant robes before an open fire.

Though almost every piece on view is superior, Gerard Horenbout’s “Crucifixion” (circa 1515) is just short of amazing. In less than 6 inches it captures the moment when brilliant orange skies are covered by nocturnal clouds while acutely detailed spectators, horses, mourners, soldiers crowd into a lush, rocky landscape.

When you consider that these expertly composed illuminations must have been painted with only a few hairs from a brush, often using colors ground from semiprecious and precious stones and that they sometimes took years to complete, you appreciate this excellent Getty offering all the more.