Utrecht Psalter
The Utrecht Psalter (Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Bibl. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr 32.) is a ninth-century
The other texts in the book include some canticles and hymns used in the office of the hours, including various canticles, the Te Deum and Athanasian Creed. The latter text was the subject of intense study by Thomas Duffus Hardy and others after scholarly interest in the psalter grew in the 19th century.
History and copies
The entire volume contains 108
The psalter was at one time thought to be a 6th-century work largely because of the use of archaic conventions in the script. The Psalter is written in
A period spent in the late 9th century in the area of
Earlier there were derivative works in other media; similar groups of figures appear in a Carolingian engraved crystal in the British Museum (the Lothair Crystal, stylistically very different) and metalwork, and some late Carolingian ivories repeat figure compositions found in the Utrecht psalter (Calkins, 211).
The original manuscript spent at least two centuries at Canterbury from the year 1000, and after the English
Illumination
The Utrecht Psalter is lavishly illustrated with lively pen and ink drawings for each
The Utrecht Psalter is important to the development of Anglo-Saxon art in the late tenth century, as the artistic style of its artwork seems to have been drawn on and adapted by Anglo-Saxon artists of this time (Pächt, 172). Although it is hardly likely that this single manuscript was solely responsible for beginning an entire new phase, the style which developed from it is sometimes known as the 'Utrecht' style of outline drawing, and survived almost unchanged into the 1020s (Wormald).
The style of the outline drawings is dramatic, marked by activity, leaping creatures and fluttering folds of drapery set in faintly sketched landscape backgrounds stretching the full span of a page. Unlike traditional medieval Psalter decoration, which focused on general narrative or symbolic aspects of the texts, the Utrecht Psalter provides a very literal, concrete depiction of every line of the text for each Psalm, all combined into one elaborate scene which directly precedes the psalm it illustrates. The purpose of this unusual mode of illustration is unclear. Some have argued it was designed to enable easier memorization of the psalm texts by associating every line with a striking image, in accordance with classical and medieval mnemonic arts (Gibson-Wood, 12–15). However, these composite images sometimes go beyond a purely literal reading of the text, incorporating New Testament scenes or motifs from Christian iconography (Pächt, 168–170).[2] Despite the individuality of the style, the hands of eight different artists have been detected.
The Psalter is the earliest and most fully illustrated of a "narrative" group of Carolingian Psalters and other manuscripts; the much greater freedom of their illustrations may represent a different, probably monastic, audience for them from the more hieratic productions for the court and the altar. Images are unframed, often varied and original in
The illustration for Psalm 27 centers on they "that go down into the pit". Winged figures poke the "workers of iniquity" with spears. On the left a king stands before a temple; Christ and his angels are shown above. The umbrella held over the king was considered strong evidence that the manuscript was not produced by an Anglo-Saxon artist (Birch, 232).
The illustration for Psalm 115 shows a
According to Getrud Schiller, the manuscript has the first Western images to show Christ dead on the cross, with eyes closed,[4] though it must be said it is hard to tell from such small drawings.
Additional texts
After the
Next comes the Athanasian Creed. The illustration appears to be a group of churchmen, with a central figure wearing the pallium of an archbishop. This need not be Athanasius at the Council of Nicea; it may also be Ebbo, or it may represent an archbishop generically as personifying the doctrinal orthodoxy of a creed. The psalter's creed had been mentioned by James Ussher in his 1647 De Symbolis when the manuscript was part of the Cotton library, but it was gone by 1723 (Vinton, 161). When the psalter was rediscovered again in the 19th century, it was thought to be the oldest manuscript containing the Latin text of the creed (Schaff, 70), as some thought the psalter dated from the 6th century. The oldest manuscripts of the Athanasian creed date from the late 8th century (Chazelle, 1056). After this is the "Apocryphal psalm", Psalm 151.
The Psalter is bound with 12 leaves of a different
Notes
- ^ "Utrecht version".
- ^ The online images from Utrecht can be made to highlight these different episodes, with a commentary in English, against a Dutch text of the Psalms.
- ^ Benson and Tselos were leading proponents of the "copy" theory, which they were the first to set out in full. See also Pächt and Hinks, ops cit, who with Kurt Weitzmann and Erwin Panofsky [1] shared this view. Calkins, 210, is more dubious that there was a close model.
- ^ Schiller, 185
References
- Benson, Gertrude R.; Tselos, Dimitri (March 1931). "New Light on the Origin of the Utrecht Psalter". The Art Bulletin. 13 (1). College Art Association: 13–79. JSTOR 3045474.
- Berenson, Ruth (Winter 1966–1967). "The Exhibition of Carolingian Art at Aachen". Art Journal. 26 (2). College Art Association: 160–165. JSTOR 775040.
- Birch, Walter de Gray (1876). The History, Art and Palaeography of the Manuscript Styled the Utrecht Psalter. London: Samuel Bagster.
- Calkins, Robert G. (1983). Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-9377-3.
- Chazelle, Celia (October 1997). "Archbishops Ebo and Hincmar of Reims and the Utrecht Psalter". Speculum. 72 (4): 1055–1077. JSTOR 2865958.
- Gibson-Wood, Carol (1987). "The Utrecht Psalter and the Art of Memory". RACAR: Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review. 14 (1/2): 9–15, 33–35. JSTOR 42630353.
- Hinks, Roger (1974) [1935]. Carolingian Art. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-06071-6.
- Lowe, Elias Avery (September 1952). "The Uncial Gospel Leaves Attached to the Utrecht Psalter". The Art Bulletin. 34 (3). College Art Association: 237–238. JSTOR 3047423.
- Morgan, Nigel. A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, Volume 4: Early Gothic Manuscripts, Part 1, '1190-1250. London: Harvey Miller, 1982, ISBN 0-19-921026-8
- Pächt, Otto (1986). Book Illumination in the Middle Ages: An Introduction. transl. from German. London: Harvey Miller. ISBN 0-19-921060-8.
- Schaff, Philip (1877). The Creeds of Christendom. Vol. 2. New York: Harper and Brothers.
- ISBN 0-7011-2514-4.
- ISBN 0853313245
- Tselos, Dimitri (December 1967). "Defensive Addenda to the Problem of the Utrecht Psalter". The Art Bulletin. 49 (4). College Art Association: 334–349. JSTOR 3048495.
- Vinton, Frederic (January 1876). "The Utrecht Psalter and the Athanasian Creed". The Princeton Review. 5 (17): 160–170.
- Walther, Ingo F.; Wolf, Norbert (2005). Codices illustres: The World's Most Famous Illuminated Manuscripts, 400 to 1600. Cologne: Taschen. ISBN 9783836553797.
- Wormald, Francis (1952). English Drawings of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. London: Faber and Faber.
- Latin Psalter in the University Library of Utrecht. Spencer, Sawyer, Bird and Co. 1875.
Further reading
- The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art : Picturing the Psalms of David (1996). Edited by Koert van der Horst, William Noel, and Wilhelmina C.M. Wüstefeld. Tuurdijk, Netherlands : HES.
- Holcomb, Melanie (2009). Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300148947. (see index)
External links
- Digital facsimile at Utrecht University
- Images of the Utrecht Psalter and related manuscripts in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database
- Layout The layout in medieval psalters (Utrecht, Harley, Bury, Eadwine ...)