The Book of Marvels: Wonder and Fear in the Middle Ages

India (detail), from Book of the Marvels of the World, about 1460–65, Master of the Geneva Boccaccio. Getty Museum, Ms. 124 (2022.15), fol. 5

This exhibition explores the Book of the Marvels of the World, an illuminated manuscript made in the 1460s that weaves together tales of places both near and far. Told from the perspective of a medieval armchair traveler in northern France, the global locations are portrayed as bizarre, captivating, and sometimes dangerously different. Additional objects in the exhibition highlight how the overlapping sensations of wonder and fear helped create Western stereotypes of the “other” that still endure today.

The exhibition website