There is a painting so great, and so strange, in the city of Derby as to be worth the visit to the gallery alone. It shows a group of spectators gathered in deep darkness round a clockwork model of the solar system. Their faces are illuminated only by an invisible source: the hidden lamp that stands in for the sun.
Two children sit rapt, beaming at the tiny toy planets before them. A scholar takes notes from the red-robed scientist at the centre, who is giving a lecture on astronomy. But as you look from one face to the next – each shown at a different angle, like planetary phases – it gradually seems that the knowledge is overpowering to a young man on the right, who appears almost blinded, and a young woman on the left, lost in the strangeness she beholds. Enlightenment – either literal or metaphorical – is not so simple.
