Event date: Tuesday 28 April 2026
Link expires: Monday 31 August 2026

Please ensure you allow enough time to watch the recording before the link expires.

Join Hilary Hope Guise for ‘Space’, the second of an exciting series of three talks on the depiction of light, space and time in art.

In early Celtic and Anglo-Saxon times, space was frightening, harbouring invisible demonic spiritual forces that caused a great fear of emptiness, as found in the book of Kells. This ‘Horror Vacui’ in which no space is allowed is evident in centuries of art.

In the 17th century, space is re-born in the airy landscapes of Claude Lorrain in step with the intellectual freedom in the Enlightenment. We return to the horror vacui in the late 19th century in Rodin’s Gates of Hell which announce a century of war. Today, the humbling reality and vastness of Space shows us ourselves, as seen from the other side of the moon.