Scripture Transfigured: Visualizing the Christian Bible from the Sixth to the Fifteenth Century

Scripture Transfigured: Visualizing the Christian Bible from the Sixth to the Fifteenth Century

December 19, 2014 – March 15, 2015

The Bible is sometimes imagined to be a rigid and unchanging book, but this was not the case in the  Middle Ages nor is it today. This exhibition presents ten facsimiles of medieval European manuscripts from the Kohler Art Library containing selections of biblical texts and images. These include individual books of the Bible, such as the Apocalypse and the Gospels, as well as books that present biblical texts in the order of the liturgical year, such as Lectionaries and Benedictionals. Also included are picture Bibles and typological commentaries relating Jewish and Christian scriptures. These illuminated manuscript facsimiles creatively blend text and image, signaling their social, political, and performative contexts. They also exemplify how medieval Bibles are transfigured into modern books, adding further variety and historical evolution to the changing form of the Bible.

This exhibition was curated by five Art History graduate students working with Professor Thomas Dale. They selected and researched facsimiles from the Kohler Art Library, wrote caption labels, and worked collaboratively to install the exhibition.

The student curators are: Ashley Cook, Peter Bovenmyer, Daniel Cochran, Mark Summers, and Matthew Westerby.

This display of facsimiles corresponds with the exhibition at the Chazen Museum of Art: Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible.

Image: Bible Moralisée. Codex Vindobonensis 2554 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek. Graz: Akademische Druck-und Verlagsanstalt, 1973. fol. 1v: God as Creator.