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by Hildegard Von Bingen (Artist), Sara Salvadori (Author)
The polymath mystic's final suite of illustrated visions presented in its entirety for the first time
Around 1170, the German abbess, mystic and composer Hildegard von Bingen embarked on her final journey to recount her visions. At this point, Hildegard entrusted her spiritual insights not only to written words, but also to painted images, wherein her divine wisdom flows through form, color, sound, numbers and the movement of the stars. The result was her final manuscript, the Book of Divine Works, completed in 1173. The Fountain of Wisdom compiles these late painted images, uniting original format reproductions of the two Bingen codices with new images, never seen before, that have been hidden within the miniatures.
Divided into three sections, the volume charts the process through which Hildegard received and articulated her divine images. The first section addresses the emission of visions through the cosmos, the sphere of creation, to the sphere of the soul; the second elucidates Hildegard's process of writing and composing these obscured images; the third demonstrates how the mystic employed sapiential code to construct her illustrations through the arts of quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.
Born to a noble family, Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) became a Benedictine novice as a teenager. Her holy visions, which she had experienced since the age of three, were first collected and published in the Scivias (1141-52). As well as preaching throughout Germany, she wrote on music, poetry, natural history and her own prophecies, which survive in the form of dazzling illuminated manuscripts.
