With the upcoming holidays just around the corner, and during the months of December and January, the Museum of Chiclana offers a new temporary exhibition that will have -from an eminently cultural perspective- Christmas as the protagonist. "The Illuminated Light. Christmas in the illuminated codex", inaugurated this morning by the Delegate of Culture, Susana Rivas, offers an interesting sample of miniatures of Christmas theme that illustrated, between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance manuscript codex whose originals are today in the most important collections of the world, both public and private: museums, libraries, etc.. These illustrated codex echoed the world in which they were born: the landscapes of the time, the ancient buildings, the clothing of a place at a specific time, the seasons of the year deciding the hustle and bustle of daily life, the customs and habits, the flowers, the small insects that frequented them,... A world.
And the fact is that, much more than just texts -sometimes, these, a minimal pretext-, there are books that have been and are objects of enormous artistic value, especially those that, unique for manuscripts, accompanied the texts with small paintings: small vignettes full of details, intricate and precious ornamental borders, capitular letters that magnified the capital letters,...
Although there were miniated codex before and there were later ones too, these books -the pulse of luxury among the powerful- reached their greatest splendor in the late Gothic period and at the dawn of the Renaissance, especially in the 15th and 16th centuries.
In this new Temporary Exhibition, the Museum of Chiclana offers, in careful facsimile editions, an interesting sample of these books: from the luxurious Devotionaries, Books of Hours, Evangeliaries, Books of Offices, etc, to the most humble Bibles pauperum. Behind them, and although some - as far as authorship or first owners are concerned - have come down to us as anonymous, names of relevant men and women of that time, often patrons of the arts in general: Eleanor of Portugal, Charles V, Philip II, Mary of Burgundy, Alexander VI, Anne of Brittany, the Duke of Berry, Eleanor de la Vega or Charles VIII of France, among others). A good sample of loose pages of this type of codices will complement what the thirty or so books exhibited in showcases tell us.
Step by step, book by book, miniature by miniature, these pages will tell us a story that will be familiar to many people: the annunciation of the Angel to Mary, her visit to her cousin Elizabeth, the journey to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, the annunciation to the shepherds, their adoration and that of the three wise men guided by a star, the flight to Egypt, the slaughter of the innocents ordered by Herod ...
Centuries after the writing of the original texts that refer to all this, anonymous or recognized miniaturists illuminated that dawning Light. And today, centuries after their patient work, some echo of that light reaches us through these copies.
The exhibition will remain open to the public until January 29.
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