Medieval Manuscript Codes Deciphered in New Getty Exhibition
Getty Museum
Cistercian Number and Alphabet System, 1300s, England. Pen and black ink and tempera.
Symbols and Signs: Decoding Medieval Manuscripts at the The J. Paul Getty Museum will showcase how medieval scribes and artists used textual and visual strategies to captivate readers and engage them in deciphering enigmatic codes.
“People today are fascinated by ciphers, puzzles, and secrets,” says Elizabeth Morrison, senior curator of manuscripts at the Getty Museum and co-curator of the exhibition. “This exhibition explores the clever ways that scribes and artists of the past deliberately and playfully employed such codes to arrest the attention of medieval audiences and engage their minds.”
The exhibition - drawn mainly from the Getty’s manuscripts collection with additions from the museum’s holdings in photographs - will run May 20 through August 10, and will be divided into three sections. The first section, Word Codes, will highlight how medieval manuscripts written in Latin, Hebrew, or Armenian often appear strange due to their intricate and imaginative design. These texts used abbreviations, monograms, and names as playful puzzles for medieval audiences.
Image Codes focuses on the visual arts from the Middle Ages which employ abstract symbols, personal emblems, and selective colors to capture complex thoughts and hierarchies. These tactics were clear to medieval audiences but require some explanation for modern viewers to be able to understand. Lastly, Schematic Codes explores how codes devised in the Middle Ages such as musical notation, indexes, and calendars, organize complex information visually.
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Getty Museum
Names written in superimposed letters from Model Book of Calligraphy, 1561 – 1562, Georg Bocskay. Watercolors, gold and silver paint, and ink on parchment.
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Getty Museum
Decorated incipit page from psalter, German, about 1240 –50. Tempera colors, gold leaf, and silver leaf on parchment
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Getty Museum
Canon table page from Gospel book, 1615, Mesrop of Khizan (Armenian, active 1605 – 1651). Tempera colors, gold paint, and gold leaf on glazed paper
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Getty Museum
Inhabited initial IN from Breviary, 1153, Sigenulfus. Tempera colors, gold leaf, gold paint, and ink on parchment.
Lunar Sentence I (Maquette), 1978, Leandro Katz. Gelatin silver print.
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Getty Museum
Decorated text page from Rothschild Pentateuch, French or German, 1296. Tempera colors, gold, and ink on parchment.
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The Annunciation from Irmengard Codex, German, shortly after 1053. Tempera colors, gold, and ink.
“Codes were and continue to be integral parts of everyday life,” said Orsolya Mednyanszky, assistant curator of manuscripts at the Getty Museum and co-curator of the exhibition. “Our hope with the exhibition is to showcase both medieval and contemporary works that bring awareness to the similarities and differences between the visual and textual conventions of the Middle Ages and present day.”
The exhibition will feature three contemporary photographers’ works juxtaposed with three medieval manuscripts in each section. Lunar Sentence I (Maquette) by Leandro Katz will be on view alongside the Cistercian Number and Alphabet System which display examples of 'substitution' alphabets, where symbols replace letters. Photographs from Irving Penn’s Small Trades series and Alfred Stieglitz’s Songs of the Sky and Equivalents series will also be displayed with corresponding manuscripts.
To complement the exhibition, Getty will host an online conversation about the Voynich Manuscript with Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis on June 13.
