The Queen Mary Psalter: A Study of Affect and AudienceIlluminated manuscripts are among the more intimate works of art surviving from the medieval period. The Queen Mary Psalter (c. 1316?-21) has long been recognized as one of the most outstanding English Gothic manuscripts. Its devotional texts are framed by an encyclopedic series of narrative images painted in a delicate and courtly style. The psalms are introduced by an Old Testament preface in which tinted drawings are explained by French captions. The psalm decoration incorp. a combination of framed illuminations of the life of Christ at the beginnings of important psalms, and tinted drawings in the bottom margin of every page that tell stories ranging from the bestiary to the lives of the saints. Winner of the 2000 Millennium Award. 100+ illus. |
Common terms and phrases
Alphonso Psalter Ancient 6 Master Annunciation audience autre Bathsheba Bestiaries Bibles moralisées biblical Binski birth Bodley 270b books of hours British Library calendar Cambridge Capetian captions Chapter Christ codex Colorplate coment coronation courtly cycles David decoration depicted devotional discussed Edward Edward II emphasized England English estoyt femme fesoyt folio fourteenth century French Gaveston genealogy Gothic Manuscripts Hagar historiated initials Holy Kinship iconography illuminations imagery images incipit Isabelle of France Isabelle Psalter Isabelle's Jean Pucelle Jeroboal Jesse Tree king London Louis Psalter Margaret marginal Medieval miniatures mise-en-page Morgan Moses mother Moyses narrative notes Old Testament ouht Oxford paintings Paris Passion scenes patronage poeple preface Psalm psalter proper Pucelle Queen Mary Psalter Royal 2B.vii Sainte-Chapelle saints Samson Sandler sequence Solomon soun story Studies Taymouth Hours thirteenth-century Thomas Becket Tickhill Psalter tion touz University Press Virgin Vita Edwardi Secundi women
Popular passages
Page 229 - Believe no counsel that is contrary to the will of your father, as the wise King Solomon instructs you. Understand, certainly, that if you now act contrary to our counsel, and continue in wilful disobedience, you will feel it all the days of your life, and all other sons will take example to be disobedient to their lords and fathers.
Page 7 - that: To understand a narrative is not merely to follow the unfolding of the story, it is also to recognize its construction in 'storeys,' to project the horizontal concatenations of the narrative 'thread
Page 152 - forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root,
Page 81 - Let us place our first step in the ascent at the bottom, setting the whole visible world before us as a mirror through which we may pass over to God, the supreme creator.
Page 8 - vertical axis; to read (to listen to) a narrative is not merely to move from one word to the next, it is also to move from one level to the next.
Page 228 - had been laid by the messengers before the King of France and the queen herself, she replied, 'I feel that marriage is a joining together of man and woman, maintaining the undivided habit of life, and that someone has come between my husband and myself trying to break this bond; I protest that I will not return
Page 190 - for thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.
Page 175 - And the Lord being angry with them, delivered them into the hands of the Philistines and of the children of Ammon.
Page 153 - R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and genealogies : a literary anthropology of the French Middle
Page 190 - Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things?