This exhibition and catalogue, which have been awarded financial support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, presents twenty-eight works of art from one of the finest collections of Old Master paintings in the United States. These paintings were acquired by Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., for the art museum he founded in 1951 at Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC. The great Baroque holdings of the museum have long overshadowed other parts of the collection, and A Divine Light marks the first time that its equally beautiful Northern Renaissance paintings have been the sole focus of an exhibition. A Divine Light is designed as intimate encounter with the devotional art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and explores the ways in which Northern Renaissance artists expressed the central mysteries of the Christian faith through setting, pose, gesture, and the objects of everyday life. Four of the paintings are undergoing conservation treatment prior to their presentation in Nashville.
A Divine Light: Northern Renaissance Paintings from Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.