Light, Art, Divine Presence

Luminous Women Saints in some Paintings from the Late Middle Ages from the Episcopal Museum of Vic, Catalonia

Abstract

The Episcopal Museum of Vic, internationally known for its extraordinary collection of Roman and Gothic paintings, allows us to follow not only the stylistic and iconographic evolution of Catalan painting but also the evolution of medieval theology and spirituality. At the end of the Middle Ages, through the liturgy of light, a new ordinance of knowledge was discovered, in which the energetic evidence of the luminous feminine, starting from the Virgin Mother of God, has a primary function.

From the solar mandorla of the Virgin of the Child of Santa Margarida de Vilaseca through the saints who surround the stigmatized Francis of Assisi and the Virgin of Pentecost of Santa María de Verdú or stoned Saint Emerenciana, to name just a few, all those painted women They move in a natural light element. They are imposed by their luminosity and light is their absolute condition, divine presence.