Leaves from a glossed Psalter, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

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Description

4 leaves (2 bifolia), 241mm. by 177mm., 17 lines of biblical text in an unvarying central column, 177mm. by 52mm., written in two sizes of a very fine rounded Italian romanesque bookhand, the Gloss in small script where required on either side of the central text, leaves should be in the order fols.1 + 3 (consecutive) and 2 + 4 (consecutive) with Psalms 141:5 to 143:2 and Psalms 145:10 to 148:5, headings in red, versal initials in red, five large decorated initials up to 26mm. by 17mm., painted in yellow enclosing white designs on panels infilled with blue, green, orange-red and purple, leaves 2 and 4 cropped on outer edge with loss of extremities of text, several upper margins ragged without loss of text, minor stains, full green morocco, title gilt, in a black cloth slipcase, morocco title label gilt

Catalogue Note

Boehlen Collection, MS 1106 ES. Previously in the collection of Mark Lansburgh. A bifolium is Plate VI in Lansburgh’s An Illustrated Check List of Manuscript Leaves, 1962, described there by E.A. Lowe: “The next specimen is from a beautifully-written glossed Psalter. In the text column we have late Caroline minuscule executed in firm roundish strokes by the hand of a superb master of the outgoing eleventh century. However, we find the gloss in a cramped style tending towards Gothic and it seems more recent by two or three generations”. In fact, text and gloss here are almost certainly contemporaneous, and interestingly so. Biblical text in twelfth-century glossed books was usually stately and archaic, and its calligraphic tradition evolved eventually into gothic display hands, while the glossing hands were was often markedly more compressed and gothic and led the way towards scholastic bookhands (cf. C. de Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible, 1984, pp.36-7). In the present leaves we can see the moment when the two social classes of script begin to diverge. The delicate initials here are of the classic type which were rediscovered by Florentine humanists of the early fifteenth century who, mistaking their origins, adopted them as late antique models for renaissance white-vine illumination.