Getty Manuscripts Exhibition Focuses on Travel in the Middle Ages
Getty Museum
Villagers on Their Way to Church from Book of Hours, about 1550. Simon Bening (Flemish, about 1483 – 1561). Tempera colors and gold paint.
Going Places: Travel in the Middle Ages will showcase the many ways artists during the Middle Ages depicting the many reasons for travel and ways of undertaking it.
On view at the Getty Center from September 2 through November 30, it features manuscripts from the museum’s permanent collection, many of which are rarely seen. Included will be the 13th century Romance of Alexander, a new addition to the collection, and The Book of Marvels of the World acquired by the Getty Museum in 2022 that was the focus of the 2024 exhibition The Book of Marvels: Wonder and Fear in the Middle Ages.
In medieval times, travel was mainly for work or professional duties. While he average European during this time rarely ventured beyond a 20-mile radius in their lifetime, the concept of travel loomed large in the medieval imagination. The exhibition primarily highlights religious travel, but also looks at other reasons such as for diplomacy, war, trade, and tournament fighting.
“This exhibition allows our audience to connect with medieval art through what today is an almost everyday human experience,” said Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum. “Many of our visitors are travelers themselves, coming to the Getty from around the world, and this exhibition offers them a glimpse into how people hundreds of years ago understood travel through art.”
The exhibition unfolds over three sections. Following in the Footsteps of Christ will highlight how journeys were central to the narrative traditions of the Christian Bible and that pilgrimages were the primary form of medieval religious travel. This section will also explore how conversions of a spiritual nature were represented as mental journeys. One featured work will be The Sick, the Leprous, and the Lame Praying at Saint Hedwig’s Tomb; People Coming to Visit Saint Hedwig’s Tomb. The relics of saints attracted many throughout Europe who were in search of miraculous cures, which is seen in the lower half of the page as pilgrims travel by foot, horseback, and cart to reach the shrine of Saint Hedwig. Above the traveling pilgrims, many pray at her tomb hoping for divine healing.
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Getty Museum
Barlaam, Carrying a Shoulder Pack, Crosses a River from Barlaam and Josephat, 1469. Follower of Hans Schilling (German, active 1459 – 1467). Tempera colors, colored washes, and ink.
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Getty Museum
China (Seres) from Book of the Marvels of the World, about 1460 – 65. Master of the Geneva Boccaccio (French, active about 1445 – 1470). Colored washes, gold, and ink.
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Getty Museum
Saint Christopher Carrying the Christ Child from Book of Hours, about 1420. Spitz Master (French, active about 1415– 1425). Tempera colors, gold, and ink.
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Getty Museum
The Sick, the Leprous, and the Lame Praying at Saint Hedwig’s Tomb; People Coming to Visit Saint Hedwig’s Tomb from Life of the Blessed Hedwig, 1353, Silesian. Tempera colors, colored washes, and ink.
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Getty Museum
The Torment of the Proud - Valley of Burning Sulphur from Visions of the Knight Tondal, 1475. Simon Marmion (Flemish, active 1450 – 1489). Tempera colors, gold leaf, gold paint, and ink.
Distant Lands will focus on trade and warfare as reasons for travel during the period, as well as journeys of the imagination sparked by manuscripts of world histories, romances, and encyclopedias depicting mythical beasts and exotic lands. Included in this section is China (Seres) which depicts merchants at a faraway port loading goods onto a waiting ship. While Europe and China had a mercantile connection since the 1300s, the artist engaged the imaginations of viewers by representing China as a desert inhabited by dragons. This section will also look at the dark side of medieval travel through forced movements including the English expulsion of Jewish communities, the enslavement of Moors in Africa, and Christopher Columbus’s enslavement of Indigenous peoples in the Americas.
Medieval Modes of Travel will showcas both real and imagined ways of travelling. Artists reflected the medieval realities of walking, sailing, and riding, but they also gave visual form to more fantastical modes of travel through images of legendary travelers from ancient history and faraway destinations. Highlighted in this section is Barlaam, Carrying a Shoulder Pack, Crosses a River, showing the hermit Barlaam crossing a river in a small boat accompanied by a ferryman as he travels to India to convert Prince Josephat to Christianity.
