Much of the artistic legacy of the Middle Ages in Europe (ca. 500 to 1500 A.D.) was connected to religious practices and traditions.  Yet art museums often present works of medieval art from an aesthetic point of view, neglecting to address the question of their original function in religious rituals.  MOBIA’s exhibition will present a selection of medieval works from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, one of the largest and finest collections in the United States, interpreting these in the context of their use in Christian liturgical practices and personal devotion.  Because the medieval collection at the Walters represents a wide variety of objects from various time periods and places, the exhibition will highlight selected objects and discuss their use with as much historic specificity as possible.  To this end, primary sources such as texts and medieval images depicting works of art in use will enhance the installation.  The exhibition will also seek to help visitors understand the liturgical and devotional practices, both shared and divergent, of Byzantine and Western medieval Christians.

The exhibition will be divided into four sections.  The first, an introduction, “Faith and Practice in Medieval Europe,” will introduce visitors to the term “medieval” and to the basic elements of Christian religious practices in the Middle Ages in Byzantium and in Western Europe.  A small selection of objects may be used here to initiate visitors to an understanding of themes such as devotion to the saints, the celebration of mass, and the practice of religion at home.  A second section, “Art, Liturgy, and Celebration: The Realm of the Church”, will present liturgical objects such as chalices, crosiers, pyxes, etc. as well as altarpieces and icons.  A comparative presentation of Byzantine and Western church objects will illustrate liturgical the commonalities and differences in art and liturgical practices in those two main medieval subdivisions of Christianity.

The third section, “The Art of Prayer: The Realm of Personal Devotion” will examine objects used for devotion by individuals or small groups in more intimate settings such as the home and/or private or family chapels. The installation will suggest how “public” and “private” devotion was not always strictly divided, i.e. that acts of prayer in front of sometimes took place by individuals or groups in public or private spaces.  The final section, “A Medieval Bestiary: A Section for Families” will present medieval objects featuring animal imagery, many of which could have been made either for churches or for homes.  Stories and legends about animals from the medieval bestiary will help visitors to understand how religious traditions permeated much of medieval life and that our modern conception of a strict separation between “secular” and “sacred” imagery was not a medieval one.