Anglo-Catalan Psalter
Illustration for Psalm 17 (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. Lat. 8846)
This is one of three distinctive psalters made in Canterbury using the Utrecht Psalter as a model. It, too, was taken far from its point of origin in the Middle Ages; by the early 14th century the codex was in Catalonia, where the Spanish artists in the circle of Ferrer Bassa – who had brought new styles from Florence and Siena to the court of Aragon – completed its pictures in a distinctly Renaissance style. The manuscript thus unites the work of English artists following Carolingian models and the work of Spanish artists emulating Italian art, its unique hybridity reflecting the fluidity with which it passed through different regions and hands.
These photographs were chosen to demonstrate the relationship between the Anglo-Catalan and Utrecht Psalters. In both books a detail in the illustration for Psalm 17 features the Mouth of Hell, depicted in wholly different styles and yet set at similar angles; the hapless souls within seem to lament that “the sorrows of hell encompass me.” Herds of deer on a hillock above Hell echo another verse that describes a divine power “who hath made my feet like the feet of harts and who setteth me upon high places.” Another illustration shows herds of cattle, flocks of birds, and schools of fish; these images remind readers of the words of Psalm 8: “Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover the beasts also of the fields, the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, that pass through the paths of the sea.”
The digitization of both the Anglo-Catalan and Utrecht Psalters allows readers to make such comparisons more easily, but the facsimiles replicate the two manuscripts to scale and allow readers to turn their pages side by side in a close comparison of their intended effects.
This manuscript has been fully digitized and is available at the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.