DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.44947#0009
PSALTER AND HOURS OF ISABELLE OF FRANCE
TOWARDS the end of the twelfth century Gothic art
came into being, and in the thirteenth century, being
freed completely from the trammels of its Romanesque
and Byzantine parents, it grew quickly bold and confident,
manifesting itself in a thousand ways, and vivifying all the
crafts with the grace, the gaiety, and the passionate fervour
of its exultant youth. France was its chosen home; but its
spirit was strong in the adjacent countries, and in some of
these, England and the Netherlands especially, it was almost
equally fruitful, while Germany, Spain, and Italy held some-
what aloof, being less ready to escape the bondage of classical
tradition. The walls of every church of importance were
richly painted, and the windows filled with jewel-like glass.
The brilliant historiations of wall and window have nearly all
now perished. Those that remain to us have suffered much
from the hands of time and the restorer. It is only in manu-
scripts that we can study the pictorial art of this great period,
with the boundless advantage of having numerous examples
to turn to, in which the colours and lines are authentic and
as fresh as when they left the artist’s hands.
As regards the writing and illuminating of books, it
would appear that at the beginning of the thirteenth cen-
tury France did not take the undisputed lead, and that some
English monasteries, notably those of Canterbury, Durham,
St. Albans, York, Peterborough, Bury St. Edmunds, and Win-
chester, continued to produce manuscripts that were recog-
nized as rivalling or surpassing those of any other country.
But with the accession of St. Louis in 1226, Paris became
what it has remained ever since, the intellectual centre of
Europe, a loadstone attracting foreign students to its univer-
sity and foreign artists to its workshops, all astir with the
manifold enthusiasms that the Gothic spirit evoked. The
result was that during his long and beneficent reign, when
the monasteries were losing ground, and the painting of
books was more often intrusted to laymen gathered from far
and wide, a series of illuminated manuscripts were executed
in or near Paris, of which it need only be said that they were
treasures worthy to have the Sainte Chapelle for a casket.
Such are the Bibles moralisees at Vienna, Oxford, London,
and Paris, the two Evangelistaria at the Bibliotheque Na-
tionale, of one of which there is a slightly later replica at the
British Museum, the Psalter at the Rylands Library, with an
historiated initial to each psalm and a Latin description of
each subject, an allied Psalter at the Cambridge University
Library with the same descriptions in French, the Psalter
of St. Louis at the Bibliotheque Nationale, and the com-
panion volume which is the subjeCt of this essay, to name
but a few out of many. These books are executed with an
elegance and distinction that are specially Parisian. The
writing is very black and even, the ornament lavish and
often consisting of liquid gold patterns over colour, and if
the figure work throughout each volume is not always of
uniform perfection, it is because there is so much of it that
it had to be committed to many hands.
St. Louis himself owned several Psalters, of which three Psalters owned
at least are still in existence. The oldest of these is at by St- Louis.
Leyden, and was written and illuminated in England for
Geoffrey Plantagenet, Archbishop of York, who doubtless
carried it to France in 1207, when he fled from his half-
brother, King John, to die in Normandy five years later.
Another Psalter of superlative beauty, executed (whether in
France or England it is difficult to say) for Ingeburg of
Denmark, Queen of Philippe-Auguste, is among the glories
of the Musee Conde at Chantilly. A third, and the only one
TOWARDS the end of the twelfth century Gothic art
came into being, and in the thirteenth century, being
freed completely from the trammels of its Romanesque
and Byzantine parents, it grew quickly bold and confident,
manifesting itself in a thousand ways, and vivifying all the
crafts with the grace, the gaiety, and the passionate fervour
of its exultant youth. France was its chosen home; but its
spirit was strong in the adjacent countries, and in some of
these, England and the Netherlands especially, it was almost
equally fruitful, while Germany, Spain, and Italy held some-
what aloof, being less ready to escape the bondage of classical
tradition. The walls of every church of importance were
richly painted, and the windows filled with jewel-like glass.
The brilliant historiations of wall and window have nearly all
now perished. Those that remain to us have suffered much
from the hands of time and the restorer. It is only in manu-
scripts that we can study the pictorial art of this great period,
with the boundless advantage of having numerous examples
to turn to, in which the colours and lines are authentic and
as fresh as when they left the artist’s hands.
As regards the writing and illuminating of books, it
would appear that at the beginning of the thirteenth cen-
tury France did not take the undisputed lead, and that some
English monasteries, notably those of Canterbury, Durham,
St. Albans, York, Peterborough, Bury St. Edmunds, and Win-
chester, continued to produce manuscripts that were recog-
nized as rivalling or surpassing those of any other country.
But with the accession of St. Louis in 1226, Paris became
what it has remained ever since, the intellectual centre of
Europe, a loadstone attracting foreign students to its univer-
sity and foreign artists to its workshops, all astir with the
manifold enthusiasms that the Gothic spirit evoked. The
result was that during his long and beneficent reign, when
the monasteries were losing ground, and the painting of
books was more often intrusted to laymen gathered from far
and wide, a series of illuminated manuscripts were executed
in or near Paris, of which it need only be said that they were
treasures worthy to have the Sainte Chapelle for a casket.
Such are the Bibles moralisees at Vienna, Oxford, London,
and Paris, the two Evangelistaria at the Bibliotheque Na-
tionale, of one of which there is a slightly later replica at the
British Museum, the Psalter at the Rylands Library, with an
historiated initial to each psalm and a Latin description of
each subject, an allied Psalter at the Cambridge University
Library with the same descriptions in French, the Psalter
of St. Louis at the Bibliotheque Nationale, and the com-
panion volume which is the subjeCt of this essay, to name
but a few out of many. These books are executed with an
elegance and distinction that are specially Parisian. The
writing is very black and even, the ornament lavish and
often consisting of liquid gold patterns over colour, and if
the figure work throughout each volume is not always of
uniform perfection, it is because there is so much of it that
it had to be committed to many hands.
St. Louis himself owned several Psalters, of which three Psalters owned
at least are still in existence. The oldest of these is at by St- Louis.
Leyden, and was written and illuminated in England for
Geoffrey Plantagenet, Archbishop of York, who doubtless
carried it to France in 1207, when he fled from his half-
brother, King John, to die in Normandy five years later.
Another Psalter of superlative beauty, executed (whether in
France or England it is difficult to say) for Ingeburg of
Denmark, Queen of Philippe-Auguste, is among the glories
of the Musee Conde at Chantilly. A third, and the only one