A Curatorial Perspective on Two Objects

To be human is to crave light. We rise and sleep according to the rhythms of the sun, and have long associated light with divinity. Focusing on the arts of western Europe, Lumen explores the ways in which the science of light was studied by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophers, theologians, and artists during the “long Middle Ages” (800-1600 CE). Natural philosophy (the study of the physical universe) served as the connective thread for diverse cultures across Europe and the Mediterranean, uniting scholars who inherited, translated, and improved upon a common foundation of ancient Greek scholarship.

In the Middle Ages, people studied the stars and the “luminaries” (the sun and the moon) to mark the passage of time in hours, days, and seasons, as well as to determine religious feast days and understand their place in the world. Political and spiritual power was legitimized through deep knowledge of the heavens. Medieval astronomy flourished in centers like Baghdad, where philosophers translated Greek texts into Arabic during the eighth and ninth centuries and at the great observatories in Damascus, Tabriz, and Samarkand, where scholars used Indian trigonometry, as well as the mathematical knowledge of the ancient Greeks, to better understand the cosmos. Through an active culture of translation and commentary, knowledge from the Islamic world became available in multicultural Iberia (present-day Spain and Portugal), creating an important nexus of intellectual exchange that would have a profound effect on European science.

Astrolabes such as the one pictured were exquisitely crafted luxury objects, that presented two-dimensional models of the universe. The instrument consists of interchangeable plates turned to specific latitudes and engraved to reflect the curved circumference of the earth and the dome of the heavens. With such a tool, one can map stars, tell time, and locate one’s precise position on the globe (see video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiUgBeb2vtk). The monumental “tapestry of the astrolabe” was made in Flanders, and by about 1500, it graced the cathedral in Toledo, a Spanish city known as a center of science and learning with a long tradition in the manufacture of astrolabes. According to a sixteenth-century inventory, the cathedral possessed two additional tapestries adorned with astrolabes, demonstrating that in Toledo, science could serve as a powerful metaphor for God’s command of the universe. Its woven imagery shows God directing the movement of the cosmos within the rete of an astrolabe that is set in motion by an angel turning a crank. (A rete is the pierced movable plate containing the astrolabe’s star map.) At center is the polestar, also known as Polaris, or the north star. A personification of Philosophy sits enthroned, surrounded by Geometry, Arithmetic, and Astronomy (here spelled Astrologia), who points to the stars.

Exhibition page.