A LARGE ILLUMINATED INITIAL on a leaf from a luxury Psalter, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum. [France (Paris?), 13th century (c. 1270s)]

A LARGE ILLUMINATED INITIAL on a leaf from a luxury Psalter, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum

[France (Paris?), 13th century (c. 1270s)]

a leaf, c. 140 × 100mm, written with 20 lines, below top line, c. 95 × 55mm, in an attractive gothic book hand with flourished descenders, notably on the letter ‘h’, the text comprising Psalm 26:1–10, decorated with line-fillers in red, blue, and burnished gold, verse initials alternately gold with blue penwork or blue with red penwork, very fine HALF PAGE ILLUMINATED INITIAL ‘D' incorporating a cowled human head, filled with an elaborate symmetrical leafy design in colours with white tracery infilled with highly burnished gold, the upper extension slightly cropped; in a giltwood fra

PROVENANCE

1. Sold at Christie’s, 7 December 1988, lot 7 (ill.); bought by Quaritch, and presumably sold by them to their long-time customer:
2. Neil F. Phillips (1924–1997), QC, of Montreal, New York, and Virginia: his MS 1038: his sale in our rooms, 2 December 1997, lot 55 (ill.); bought by:
3. The Boehlen Collection, Bern, MS 1207.

Other leaves from the same parent manuscript (none of them with a large initial), include:

• Pss. 21:28–23:6. Leslie Hindman, Chicago, 19 November 2009, lot 16 (ill.)
• Pss. 65:15–67:7. Quaritch, Bookhands of the Middle Ages, V (1991), no. 20 (ill.)
• Ps. 67:8–17. Maggs, Catalogue 1103, European Bulletin 15 [1990], no 59 (ill.)
• Pss. 70:15–71:8. Bloomsbury Auctions, 6 July 2021, lot 61(iii) (one of three leaves)
• Pss. 71:8–72:8. Bloomsbury Auctions, as above
• Ps. 106:13–29. Bloomsbury Auctions, as above

Just as the 13th-century Paris booktrade met the needs of students and friars by providing them with small, portable, Bibles, so it also met the needs of the newly wealthy and literate bourgeoisie by providing them with luxury illuminated Psalters. There is a generic similarity between the present leaf and that from the Psalter of Joan of Navarre (see lot 14): they are both written in highly legible script, with relatively few abbreviations; each verse starts on a new line; the verse initials alternate between gold and blue, and blue and red; the empty spaces created by starting verses on new lines are occupied by line-fillers, which also alternate regularly, between those using red and blue only, and those using gold; Psalm initials are indented into the text area (usually two lines high), while verse initials are offset to the left of it. The major divisions of the Psalter (Psalms 1, 26, 38, etc.) can be almost any size from 3-line to full-page, depending on the wealth of the patron; the fact that the present leaf has an initial more than half the height of the page (occupying the top 12 lines out of 20), indicates it was from the de luxe end of the quality scale.