Seeing in the Dark

If you were hoping to see the light in the Peacock Room this winter, you’re out of luck.

That room of the Freer Gallery at the Smithsonian is an instance of the American refreshing of Europe that I wrote about in my previous post: the room was decorated by James McNeill Whistler for a house in London; purchased by Charles Freer, taken apart, shipped, and installed in his home in Detroit; and then taken apart and shipped and installed in Washington after Freer gave his collection of Asian and American art to the Smithsonian in 1906.

Amazing, the ambition of our cultural founding fathers.

Usually the shutters on the windows of the Peacock Room are opened on the third Thursday of the month. But they won’t be opened in January or February because two extraordinary light-sensitive works are on display there: a codex of the Book of Deuteronomy, and the seventh-century Byzantine illustrated parchment manuscript of the four gospels known as the Washington Codex.

The codex was probably made in a monastery near Cairo and was acquired for Freer in Giza a little more than a century ago. The Latino Times reports that “the Bibles came into Freer’s hands with sand amid their pages, discovered when they were unpacked from a shoebox at Freer’s mansion in Detroit.”

Amazing, the ambition of our cultural founding fathers.

That’s Matthew on the left, John obscured, Mark in the middle, and Luke to the right, as far as I can tell.

• 23 December 2013