Light

Without light there is no image, but light is also one of art’s great subjects. Artists have made it stand for the divine, for truth and for the fleeting beauty of the moment. We follow it from the gold of mosaics and the coloured glass of the Gothic, by way of Caravaggio, Vermeer and Turner, to the Impressionists and the artists who work with light itself today.

• Gold and glass – divine light
• Light falls in – the Renaissance
• Light out of darkness – Caravaggio and the Baroque
• Daylight in the room – Rembrandt and Vermeer
• The sun as subject – Claude, Turner and Romanticism
• The light of the moment – the Impressionists
• Nordic light
• Working with light itself – the 20th century and today