Last chance to see ‘Belles Heures’ at the Getty

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Dragon slayings, empress beheadings, skeletons grinning from the grave, saints suffering for their faith.

Day after day since mid-November, J. Paul Getty Museum visitors have been eyeing such horrors, along with visual pleasures, in the ‘Belles Heures’ of the Duke of Berry, a richly illuminated medieval manuscript. If you haven’t caught up with the exhibition of leaves from the temporarily unbound book, better hurry. The show closes Sunday.

With the help of a magnifying glass provided in the galleries, you will discover intricate details of mosaic-like patterns, stylized architecture, corkscrew waves, flowing drapery and surprisingly naturalistic anatomy. Lots of lovely stuff. And occasionally some shock value. In a scene called ‘Saint Paul the Hermit Sees a Christian Tempted’ (left), a man deals with an aggressive female temptress by biting off the tip of his tongue and spitting it out at her.

It’s all part of an artistic tour de force by three young brothers, Paul, Jean and Herman de Limbourg, who were commissioned to illuminate a magnificent personal prayer book in the early 15th century by the wealthy Duke of Berry. The French manuscript is part of the Cloisters Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Designed as a book, with unusual picture cycles inserted into the traditional format, it was dismantled so that a high-quality facsimile could be made and delicate conservation work could be done. The Met and the Getty took advantage of the opportunity to mount exhibitions, with a selection of striking images displayed on walls and pedestals. The Met’s version of the show will appear in New York from Sept. 22 to Jan. 3, 2010.

-- Suzanne Muchnic