Lumen: The Art and Science of Light 800–1600, ed. Kristen Collins and Nancy K. Turner, with contemporary [?] contributions by Glenn Phillips. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2024, 258 pp., richly illuminated.

Light is an essential element that makes life possible, and this not only in material terms (energy, orientation, growth), but also in spiritual terms. All people across the world have been obsessed with light for many different reasons, but the Middle Ages might well have been the period when light was regarded most intensively as a medium for spiritual illumination. The present volume, easily one of the most beautiful and luxurious books printed at current times, here disregarding the growing number of stunning facsimiles of medieval manuscripts, is the catalog that accompanied the exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from September 10 to December 8, 2024. This information is presented in the colophon, a little hard to detect.