Medieval Art: Christ's Side Wound as Vulva

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The Met Cloisters in New York is hosting "Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages," an exhibition exploring how medieval art depicted the body, sexuality, and gender. A central focus of the show is the intentional depiction of Christ’s side wound as a vulva-like shape, or mandorla, in illuminated manuscripts such as the 14th-century Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg. These images were designed as intimate devotional tools, inviting viewers to meditate on Christ's suffering through a lens that transcended traditional gender binaries.

Très Riches Heures: Chantilly exhibition offers ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ to see famed medieval manuscript

The Condé Museum at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris, has opened a special exhibition of the Très Riches Heures, the celebrated 15th-century illuminated manuscript. For the first time in decades, the public can view the 12 monthly calendar pages as independent works, detached from the manuscript after a painstaking conservation project. The exhibition, running until October, also features around 100 loaned medieval manuscripts, sculptures, and paintings to contextualize the manuscript's importance. The Très Riches Heures, commissioned by the Duc de Berry and begun by the Limbourg brothers around 1411, has been held at Chantilly since 1856 and is normally never lent out due to the conditions of the Duke d'Aumale's bequest.