The Queen Mary PSALTER
By Stanton, Anne Rudloff '82

Buy this book at amazon.com

The Queen Mary PSALTER:
A Study of Affect and Audience

Illuminated manuscripts are among the more intimate works of art surviving from the medieval period, for they usually were designed to edify and delight a specific owner. The Queen Mary Psalter (c. 1316?21) has long been recognized as one of the most outstanding English Gothic manuscripts. Its straightforward devotional texts are framed by a richly encyclopedic series of narrative images painted in a delicate and courtly style. The psalms are introduced by an Old Testament preface in which lively tinted drawings are explained by chatty French captions. The psalm decoration incorporates a combination of framed illuminations of the life of Christ at the beginnings of important psalms, and tiny tinted drawings in the bottom margin of every page that tell stories ranging from the bestiary to the lives of the saints. Queen Mary Tudor owned the Psalter two centuries after it was made, but substantial contextual evidence suggests that its original owner was Isabelle of France, the queen of Edward II of England and mother of Edward III. For Isabelle and her household, the Psalter provided a richly layered experience in the reading of texts, and images, for the wide variety of viewers in the queen's household.

Winner of the 2000 Millennium Award