The Trinity

The Trinity

The Trinity, in a historiated initial on a half-leaf from a noted Ferial Psalter, illuminated manuscript on vellum. [Germany, late 13th century]

c. 145 × 215 mm, the upper half of a leaf, preserving 9 lines of text and one of music in square notation on a four-line red staff, the text comprising the beginning of Psalm 109, ‘Dixit dominus domino meo’, here illustrated with a large historiated blue and red puzzle initial depicting a Gnadenstuhl Trinity: God the father holds the Cross on which Christ is crucified, the Dove of the Holy Spirit to one side, the psalm number ‘109’ in 17th(?)-century ink in the margin, and with a 20th(?)-century pencil number ‘9’, the reverse with the first 10 lines of Psalm 110 (rubbed, especially the Dove and the head of Christ, perhaps the result of devout touching); framed and glazed.

Psalm 109 is the first psalm chanted at Vespers on Sundays, and is thus (with the exception of Psalm 1) usually the most elaborately decorated in medieval Psalters. The Trinity was a standard subject for the psalm from at least the 13th century.

Two sister-leaves are known, one with The Flight into Egypt illustrating Psalm 38, the other with The Nativity illustrating Psalm 97; both were bought in 1968 from Bernard M. Rosenthal, San Francisco bookseller, by Mark Lansburgh (1925–2013), collector and curator of California, Colorado, and New Mexico, and are now in a Swiss private collection.