The Digital Walters is a branch of The Walters Art Museum Manuscripts Department.
The Digital Walters is a branch of The Walters Art Museum Manuscripts Department.
This charming but fragmentary and misbound Psalter was created in French Flanders for a lady in the first decades of the fourteenth century. The figures in the manuscript are stylistically related to those found in Ghent (diocese of Tournai), the most notable comparisons being manuscripts connected to Copenhagen, Royal Lib. GKS 3384 8°, such as Cambridge, Trinity Lib., Ms. B.II.22, Bodleian, Ms. Douce 5-6, and the Walters' own W.82. Other relationships can be found with works from Saint-Omer, in the diocese of Thérouanne, where the treatment of the borders is strikingly similar to those found, for instance, in W.90. Notes and prayers written, erased, and rewritten over the course of centuries on the originally blank pages of the book attest to its constant use up through at least the seventeenth century.
Manuscript badly scrambled and missing folios
Script is textura, tending toward semi-quadrata and occasionally precissa; hand change evident fol. 113v, line 5
Six extant historiated initials (5-11 lines); many smaller initials throughout filled with mostly female human heads, or decorated with foliate designs (3 lines); drolleries throughout, mostly animals and hybrids; original donor possibly pictured in marginalia, fols. 132v and 136v; alternating blue and gold flourished initials for versals (1 line); pages with historiated or decorated initials often have foliate borders, some terminating with animal heads; geometric red and blue line fillers, often accented with gold disks; later, probably fifteenth-century marginal figures added occasionally in brown ink (i.e. fol. 34r); text in dark brown ink
Principal cataloger: Randall, Lilian M.C.
Cataloger: Herbert, Lynley
Editor: Herbert, Lynley
Copy editor: Dibble, Charles
Contributor: Emery, Doug
Contributor: Noel, William
Contributor: Schuele, Allyson
Contributor: Tabritha, Ariel
Contributor: Toth, Michael B.
Contributor: Wiegand, Kimber
Conservator: Owen, Linda
Conservator: Quandt, Abigail
Collection Leon Gruel. Paris, n.d; cat. no. 5.
De Ricci, Seymour, and W. J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Vol. 1. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1935; p. 772, cat. no. 93.
Randall, Lillian M.C. Images on the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; p. 38 and passim.
Oliver, Judith H. Gothic Manuscript Illumination in the Diocese of Liège (c. 1250-1330), vol. 1. Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts from the Low Countries, 3. Leuven: Peeters, 1988; p. 152.
Randall, Lilian M. C. Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery. Vol. 3, Belgium, 1250-1530. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press in association with the Walters Art Gallery, 1997; pp. 74-77, cat. no. 224.
Gy, Pierre-Marie. "Bulletin de liturgie." Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 84 (2000): 513-544; p. 520.
Büttner, F.O. "Form and History: Der illuminierte Psalter im Westen." In The Illuminated Psalter. Edited by F.O. Bütner, 1-106. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004; p. 31.
These are pages that we pulled aside that disrupted the flow of the manuscript reader. These may be bindings, inserts, bookmarks, and various other oddities.
Flanders or French Flanders
Ca. 1310-20 CE
book
Non-original Binding
Rebound with red velvet in Paris by Léon Gruel, late nineteenth or early twentieth century; originally sewn with five bands, re-sewn out of order with three cords; page edges re-gilded at this time; Gruel-made telescopic book box replaced by Walters conservation department 1986-87
The primary language in this manuscript is Latin.
Created for female patron
Notations by later, unidentified owners throughout, datable to fifteenth through seventeenth centuries
Léon Gruel, Paris, owned in late nineteenth or early twentieth century; Gruel and Engelmann bookplate on pastedown of upper board, inscribed "No. 374"; same number, along with penciled "No. 5," on Gruel dealer description originally pasted to first flyleaf and removed by Dorothy Miner, now in file
Henry Walters, Baltimore, purchased from Gruel between 1900 and 1931
Walters Art Museum, 1931, by Henry Walters' bequest
Flanders or French Flanders
Ca. 1310-20 CE
book
The primary language in this manuscript is Latin.
Created for female patron
Notations by later, unidentified owners throughout, datable to fifteenth through seventeenth centuries
Léon Gruel, Paris, owned in late nineteenth or early twentieth century; Gruel and Engelmann bookplate on pastedown of upper board, inscribed "No. 374"; same number, along with penciled "No. 5," on Gruel dealer description originally pasted to first flyleaf and removed by Dorothy Miner, now in file
Henry Walters, Baltimore, purchased from Gruel between 1900 and 1931
Walters Art Museum, 1931, by Henry Walters' bequest
This charming but fragmentary and misbound Psalter was created in French Flanders for a lady in the first decades of the fourteenth century. The figures in the manuscript are stylistically related to those found in Ghent (diocese of Tournai), the most notable comparisons being manuscripts connected to Copenhagen, Royal Lib. GKS 3384 8°, such as Cambridge, Trinity Lib., Ms. B.II.22, Bodleian, Ms. Douce 5-6, and the Walters' own W.82. Other relationships can be found with works from Saint-Omer, in the diocese of Thérouanne, where the treatment of the borders is strikingly similar to those found, for instance, in W.90. Notes and prayers written, erased, and rewritten over the course of centuries on the originally blank pages of the book attest to its constant use up through at least the seventeenth century.
Manuscript badly scrambled and missing folios
Script is textura, tending toward semi-quadrata and occasionally precissa; hand change evident fol. 113v, line 5
Six extant historiated initials (5-11 lines); many smaller initials throughout filled with mostly female human heads, or decorated with foliate designs (3 lines); drolleries throughout, mostly animals and hybrids; original donor possibly pictured in marginalia, fols. 132v and 136v; alternating blue and gold flourished initials for versals (1 line); pages with historiated or decorated initials often have foliate borders, some terminating with animal heads; geometric red and blue line fillers, often accented with gold disks; later, probably fifteenth-century marginal figures added occasionally in brown ink (i.e. fol. 34r); text in dark brown ink
Principal cataloger: Randall, Lilian M.C.
Cataloger: Herbert, Lynley
Editor: Herbert, Lynley
Copy editor: Dibble, Charles
Contributor: Emery, Doug
Contributor: Noel, William
Contributor: Schuele, Allyson
Contributor: Tabritha, Ariel
Contributor: Toth, Michael B.
Contributor: Wiegand, Kimber
Conservator: Owen, Linda
Conservator: Quandt, Abigail
Collection Leon Gruel. Paris, n.d; cat. no. 5.
De Ricci, Seymour, and W. J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Vol. 1. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1935; p. 772, cat. no. 93.
Randall, Lillian M.C. Images on the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966; p. 38 and passim.
Oliver, Judith H. Gothic Manuscript Illumination in the Diocese of Liège (c. 1250-1330), vol. 1. Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts from the Low Countries, 3. Leuven: Peeters, 1988; p. 152.
Randall, Lilian M. C. Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery. Vol. 3, Belgium, 1250-1530. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press in association with the Walters Art Gallery, 1997; pp. 74-77, cat. no. 224.
Gy, Pierre-Marie. "Bulletin de liturgie." Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 84 (2000): 513-544; p. 520.
Büttner, F.O. "Form and History: Der illuminierte Psalter im Westen." In The Illuminated Psalter. Edited by F.O. Bütner, 1-106. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004; p. 31.
These are pages that we pulled aside that disrupted the flow of the manuscript reader. These may be bindings, inserts, bookmarks, and various other oddities.
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