Hildegard Von Bingen In the Heart of God

Following the publication of her impressive and immersive study of the illustrations of Hildegard of Bingen’s first work, Scivias, (Hildegard von Bingen: A Journey into the Images [2019]—see my review here), Sara Salvadori was invited to apply her creative insights to the illustrations of the Lucca manuscript of Hildegard’s last great work, the Liber Divinorum Operum (The Book of Divine Works; henceforth LDO). The result is this new book, which delivers the cosmological analysis that Salvadori had previewed at the end of her first volume, while also bringing the later manuscript into dialogue with the Scivias images. Once again, Salvadori’s capacious imagination has combined with the enthusiastic support of her collaborators (including Michaela Pereira and José C. Santos Paz, whose scholarly essays frame both ends of the study) and the lavish editorial direction of arthouse publisher Skira to produce another remarkable volume.