ART REVIEW : Getty Showcases a Cautionary Tale From the 15th Century

Hell, according to medieval lore, was a place of flaming horrors. It had a “Valley of Homicides” full of burning coals that roasted damned souls, then liquefied and strained them into a sauce that bubbled over a fire. Heretics were tossed back and forth between a mountainous blaze of stinking sulfur and a freezing abyss. The avaricious were devoured by a beast whose mouth was a vast furnace. Gluttons and fornicators went to an oven-like house where they were chopped up by tormentors.

Such are the punishments of sin--and the artful delights--in “The Visions of Tondal,” a 15th-Century French illuminated manuscript on view through July 1 at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The manuscript--which recounts a popular cautionary tale about a fictional knight’s journey through hell, purgatory and heaven--is one of the Getty’s most prized possessions and surely its most enchanting illuminated book. A few pages have been exhibited in the past, but this is the museum’s first show of all 20 illuminated leaves, attributed to Simon Marmion.(The pages were separated at the spine of the book by the previous owner--a damaging practice that nonetheless has obvious advantages for viewers.)

The Getty has pulled out all the stops for this first full exhibition of the treasured manuscript. Special glass cases display upright pages in sequence, so that visitors can follow the story. Additional 15th-Century French and Flemish manuscripts in the museum’s collection provide a context for Marmion’s tiny paintings. A new museum publication, “ ‘The Visions of Tondal’ From the Library of Margaret of York,” is an enlightening and highly readable paperback book that contains color reproductions of all the tiny paintings, a translation of the text and essays by Thomas Kren, the Getty’s curator of manuscripts, and Roger S. Wieck, associate curator of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts at the Pierpont Morgan Library.

We learn, for example, that there are 243 surviving “Tondal” manuscripts in 15 languages, but the Getty owns the only illuminated version. It was commissioned in the 1470s by Margaret of York, the Duchess of Burgundy, for her library of devotional texts.

The story was written in the mid-12th Century in Regensburg, Germany, by an Irish monk who identified himself in the prologue as Marcus. The literary tradition of heroes who visit otherworldly regions dates back to the early Babylonian “Epic of Gilgamesh” of 2000 BC and reached widespread fame with Dante’s “Divine Comedy” of the 14th Century, according to Wieck. “Tondal” spread from the Latin-literate monastic community to the vernacular and enjoyed great popularity until the early 16th Century. Today the story is likely to be read as a powerful--if single-minded--narrative that inspired astonishing paintings.

The illustrations are notable for their gem-like detail and naturalism. There is no shortage of gold-streaked angel wings, worried faces and ghoulish monsters. The Getty’s “Tondal,” which is written in French, also provides a guide to Burgundian style. Instead of illustrating the medieval tale in a contemporary setting, Marmion dressed the characters in 15th-Century Burgundian fashions. At the same time, Marmion displayed a remarkable gift for picturing intangibles--smoke, mist, fire and foul odors--in ephemeral masses of color and light that put one in mind of Mark Rothko’s abstractions.

The story’s hero, Tondal, is a handsome, young Irish knight who “never gave a thought” to his soul. One day when tried to collect a debt from a friend who could not pay him but offered him dinner, Tondal suffered a seizure and was thought to be dead. The only thing that prevented his friends from burying him was “a little warmth that could be felt on his chest.”

While in this unconscious state, his naked soul left his body and his guardian angel came to show him what happens to sinners such as Tondal. Here Marmion was in his glory, as he illustrated the journey that took Tondal and the angel to one hellish terror after another. Eventually they found Lucifer, whose “pride and presumption” condemned him to the greatest depths of hell.

Duly terrorized and repentant, Tondal then proceeded from darkness to the compelling light of Purgatory, where “the bad but not very bad” endured relatively light punishment. “The good but not very good” fared even better, and “the faithfully married” basked in sheer joy. By the time Tondal saw “good monks and nuns” living in silk tents filled with heavenly music and finally arrived at the jeweled walls of paradise, he was persuaded to mend his ways. His soul then returned to his body. He gave all his worldly goods to the poor, preached devotion and lived a saintly life--presumably until he wafted off to join his heavenly visions.