|
|
|
|
|
|
Detailed record for Additional 42130
|
|
|
|
| Title |
Psalter (the 'Luttrell Psalter') |
| Origin |
England, N. (Diocese of Lincoln) |
| Date |
2nd quarter of the 14th century |
| Language |
Latin |
| Script |
Gothic |
| Decoration |
One framed bas-de page miniature in colours with gold on a decorated gold ground with full border (f. 202v). 11 large historiated initials at beginning of the major Psalms with partial border in colours with gold. Over 400 decorated borders with bas-de page scenes in colours with gold, containing a variety of figural, foliate, monstrous, genre and religious motifs (on every page from f. 13 to f. 215 and infrequently to f. 259v). 10 large hybrids in colours in the outer margins of the calendar (ff. 1-12). Framed initials in colours with gold, with zoomorphic or foliate decoration, at the beginning of the calendar months and remaining psalms. Numerous initials in red, blue and gold with penwork decoration |
| Dimensions in mm |
350 x 245 (255 x 170mm) |
| Official foliation |
iii + 309 (f. i is a parchment flyleaf and ff. ii and iii are paste-downs to the former upper inside cover, kept separately + 3 paper flyleaves at the beginning and 1 parchment former paste-down and 2 paper flyleaves at the end). |
| Collation |
i-xvi12(ff. 1-192), xvii10(ff. 193-202), xviii-xxv12(f. 203-298), xxvi12-1(ff. 299-309). The last folio is now lost. Catchwords in a box surround at the end of each quire except i, xvii and xxiii. |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. Brown leather with tooling including a Tudor rose-style emblem. Former binding: Cambridge, c.1625-1640. Brown calf with gold and silver tooling is kept separately together with the remains of 14th-century cords and sewing. |
| Provenance |
Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (b. 1276; d. 1345) of Irnham, Lincolnshire: inscription: 'Dns. Galfridus Louterell me fieri fecit' and accompanying miniature (f. 202v) of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, mounted, armed, and attended by his wife Agnes (d. 1340), daughter of Sir Richard de Sutton, and his daughter-in-law Beatrice, daughter of Sir Geoffrey Scrope of Masham, all with coats of arms.
The FitzAlan family, earls of Arundel: obits in the calendar (ff. 1r-12v) in late 14th or early 15th century hands of Richard FitzAlan, 3rd Earl of Arundel (d. 24 Jan. 1375/6), Eleanor his wife, daughter of Henry Plantagenet, 3rd Earl of Lancaster (d. 11 January 1372), Joan, daughter of Eleanor and wife of the Humphrey de Bohun (d. 17 April 1419); Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford (d. 17 January 1375), Eleanor, widow of Roger, 3rd Baron de la Warr, and niece of Eleanor, Countess of Arundel, above (d. 17 June 1387).
Lord William Howard (b. 1563, d.1640) of Naworth: his name inscribed on f. 1: 'Will' Howard. Noward'.
Mary Charlton, wife of Sir Edward Charlton, Baronet, of Hesleyside, county Northumberland: owned by her before 1703: inscription on f. 12v (see below).
Sir Nicholas Sherburne (Shireburn), Baronet, of Stonyhurst: his inscription on f. 12v, 'Liber Nich: Scireburn ex dono Dam: Mariae Charleton de Cartington [i.e. his mother-in-law, Mary, wife of Sir Edward Charlton, Bart., daughter and coheiress of Sir Edward Widdrington, Bart., of Cartington] Ap: An: Do: 1703'. Other signatures of Sir Nicholas Sherburne are on ff. i recto, 18r, 283v, 309v.
The Weld family inherited Sir Nicholas Sherburne's estate at Stonyhurst in 1754.
Thomas Weld (b. 1750, d. 1810) of Lulworth Castle, his armorial bookplate (f. iii); his descendants deposited the manuscript in the Museum on indefinite loan during the years 1896-1906, 1909-1929.
Herbert Weld, offered for sale by him: Sotheby's, 29 July 1929, lot 10, but withdrawn prior to auction.
Mrs Mary Angela Noyes, née Mayne (b. 1889, d. 1976), widow of Lieutenant Richard Shireburn Weld-Blundell and wife of Alfred Noyes, poet (b. 1880, d. 1958), sold privately by her to the British Museum for 30,000 guineas. The money was loaned interest-free for one year by Mr John Pierpoint Morgan, Jr (b. 1867, d. 1943), American financier, philanthropist and art collector, and repaid with funds raised by public subscription, with assistance from the National Art Collections Fund in 1930. |
| Notes |
This celebrated manuscript, commissioned by a wealthy landowner in the first half of the 14th century, is one of the most striking to survive from the Middle Ages. It is painted in rich colours embellished with gold and silver, of vitality and sometimes bizarre inventiveness of decoration.
Square and diamond-shaped musical notation on a stave of four red lines in the Office of the Dead (ff. 296-309v). |
| Select bibliography |
Illuminated Manuscripts Exhibited in the Grenville Library (London, British Museum, 1967), no. 27.
Francis Klingender, Animals in Art and Thought to the end of the Middle Ages, ed. by Evelyn Antal and John Harthan (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 408, pl. 241.
Lucy Freeman Sandler, The Peterborough Psalter in Brussels and other Fenland Manuscripts (London: Harvey Miller, 1974).
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Manuscript (Oxford: Phaidon, 1979), pl. 39.
Jonathan Alexander, 'Painting and Manuscript Illumination for Royal Patrons in the Later Middle Ages', in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 141-62 (p. 161).
Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), no. 107.
Michael Gullick, Calligraphy (London: Studio Editions, 1990), pl. 18.
Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion, 1992), pl. 52.
Janet Backhouse, "The sale of the Luttrell Psalter." Antiquaries, Book Collectors and the Circles of Learning, ed. by R. Myers and M. Harris (Winchester, 1996), pp. 113-28.
Michael Camille, Mirror in Parchment: the Luttrell Psalter and the making of Medieval England (London: Reaktion Books, 1998).
Joyce Coleman, 'New Evidence about Sir Geoffrey Luttrell's Raid on Sempringham Priory, 1312', British Library Journal, 25 (1999), 103-28.
John Higgitt, The Murthly Hours: Devotion, Literacy and Luxury in Paris, England and the Gaelic West (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 154, 157.
Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘The Images of Words in English Gothic Psalters’, in Studies in the Illustration of the Psalter, ed. by Brendan Cassidy and Rosemary Muir Wright (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000), pp. 67-86 (pp. 68, 72-76, 81, pls. 16-21).
Jonathan Alexander, 'An English Illuminator's Work in Some Fourteenth-Century Law Books at Durham' in Alexander, Studies in Italian Manuscript Illumination (London: Pindar Press, 2002), pp. 55-64 (p. 59).
Alixe Bovey, Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2002), pp. 47, 50, pl. 40.
Richard Verdi, ‘Saved!: 100 Years of the National Art Collections Fund (London: Hayward Gallery, 2003), no. 38 [exhibition catalogue].
Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 13, pl. 4, fig. 86.
Alixe Bovey, The Chaworth Roll: A Fourteenth-Century Genealogy of the Kings of England (London: Sam Fogg, 2004), p. 26.
Michael Camille, ‘Bodies, Names and Gender in a Gothic Psalter (Paris, NBF, ms lat. 10435), in The Illuminated Psalter: Studies in the Content, Purpose and Placement of its Images, ed. by F. O. Büttner, (Belgium: Brepols, 2004), pp. 377-86 (p. 377).
Michaela Braesel, ‘The Influence of Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts on the Pre-Raphaelites and the Early Poetry of William Morris’, Journal of William Morris Studies, 15.4 (2004), 41-54 (p. 42).
Treasures of the British Library, ed. by Nicolas Barker and others (London: British Library, 2005), p. 241.
Michele Brown, The Luttrell Psalter: A Facsimile with Commentary (London: The Folio Society, 2006).
Richard Ovenden, ‘The libraries of the antiquaries (c. 1580-1640) and the idea of a national collection’, in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, ed. by Elisabeth Leedham-Green and Teresa Webber, 3 vols (Cambridge: University Press, 2006), I: To 1640, pp. 527-61 (p. 541).
Michelle Brown, The Holkham Bible: A Facsimile (London, British Library, 2007), p. 16 [facsimile commentary].
Deirdre Jackson, Marvellous to Behold: Miracles in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2007), pl. 36, 55.
Elizabeth Morrison, Beasts: Factual & Fantastic (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007), p. 70.
Sacred: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and their Sacred Texts (London: British Library, 2007), p. 151. [exhibition catalogue].
Margaret Scott, Medieval Dress & Fashion (London: British Library, 2007), p. 101, pl. 57.
Nick Loven and the Lincolnshire Heritage Filmmakers, The Luttrell Psalter Film (Crow's Eye Productions, 2008) [viewed online 05.08.2013 at http://wagscreen.wordpress.com/the-luttrell-psalter-film/].
James Robinson, Masterpieces: Medieval Art (London, British Museum, 2008), p. 161, pl. on. p. 160.
Joe Flatman, Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2009), pl. 13.
Chris Given-Wilson, The Exequies of Edward III and the Royal Funeral Ceremony in Late Medieval England, 124 no. 507 (April 2009), 257-82 (p. 278).
Michael Schaffer '(All)tägliche Toilette: Vom Kamm bis zum Zahnstocher. Körperpflege im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit', Concilium Medii Aevi, 12 (2009) 225-250.
Julian M. Luxford, 'Out of the Wilderness: A Fourteenth-Century English Drawing of John the Baptist', Gesta, 49.2 (2010), 137-50 (pp. 142-43).
Kathryn A Smith, 'Margin: Marginalia in Medieval Art. with particular reference to the Luttrell Psalter (MS. London, B.L., Add.42130)', Studies in Iconography, 33 (2012), 29-44.
Kathleen Doyle, 'The Luttrell Psalter', in Lincolnshire's Great Exhibition: Treasures, Saints and Heroes (London: Scale Arts & Heritage, 2015), pp. 64-79.
Richard Olney, 'Lincholnshire's landed elite 1215-2015', in Lincolnshire's Great Exhibition: Treasures, Saints and Heroes (London: Scale Arts & Heritage, 2015), pp. 80-99 (pp. 94-96, pl. on p. 94).
Kathryn A. Smith, ‘Found in Translation: Images Visionary and Visceral in the Welles-Ros Bible’, Gesta 59: 2 (2020), 91-130 (p. 110 n. 93). |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
f. 13
David |
f. 13
David |
f. 13
Grotesque |
| |
f. 13
Stag and Virgin and Child |
f. 13
Monkey |
f. 15
Unicorn |
| |
f. 18
Inscription |
f. 19
Decorated initial and borders |
f. 19v
A boar. |
| |
f. 23
Decorated border |
f.31
A bishop; a fox with goose |
f. 32v
Grotesque merman |
| |
f. 33
Lady with squirrel |
f. 36v
A dragon fly and man |
f. 51
A murder at an altar |
| |
f. 53v
Beheading of John the Baptist |
f. 55r
An organ with bellows |
f.60
A woman striking a man |
| |
f. 61
Blood-letting |
f. 62v
Grotesques |
f.68
Man with a woman on his shoulders |
| |
f. 69v
Fool |
f. 70v
Mermaid |
f. 70v
Mermaid |
| |
f. 81v
Woman and grotesques |
f. 81v
Woman and grotesque |
f. 83v
Saracen |
| |
f. 90v
The Last Supper |
f. 97v
Pulling teeth |
f. 101v
Angels and souls |
| |
f. 147v
Archers and target |
f. 152v
Wrestlers |
f. 158
Woman with a sack |
| |
f. 159
Hawking |
f. 160
A rowing boat; a snail |
f. 160v
A griffin |
| |
f.161
Bear baiting |
f.161v
A ship at sea |
f.162
A monkey driving a cart |
| |
f.163v
Sheep and shepherds in a pen |
f. 164r
A hunter; a bat |
f. 164v
Constantinople |
| |
f. 170
Ploughing |
f.174
A choir |
f. 174
Tonsured clerics |
| |
f. 176v
Rabbits |
f. 181
Water-mill |
f. 193
Women working |
| |
f. 196v
Stealing fruit |
f. 202v
Sir Geoffrey Luttrell |
f. 202v
Sir Geoffrey Luttrell |
| |
f. 204v
Hybrid creature |
f. 207v
Preparing a feast |
f. 208
Feast |
| |
f. 208
Feast |
|
|
|
|
