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The Psalter-Hours of Isabelle of France in the Nineteenth Century

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Panayotova, SD 

Abstract

This small volume, intended to be held intimately in the devotee’s palms, represents the ultimate medieval prayer book. It combines the two texts central to private devotion, the 150 Psalms of the Old Testament and the Hours of the Virgin, prefaced by a cycle of full-page miniatures (ills. 1-2). One of the finest illuminated manuscripts to survive from thirteenth-century Paris, it is the sister book of the celebrated Psalter of Louis IX of France. The two volumes share size, layout, style and heraldic ornament as well as textual and iconographic sources for their Calendars and Psalms. The female prayers, heraldic line-fillers and obits of Capetian family members reveal that the Psalter-Hours was made for a royal woman related to Louis IX. Her identity has been the subject of debates for over a century, but the likeliest candidate remains Louis’ sister, Isabelle of France. The manuscript remained with the French royal family at least until the time of Charles V (1364-1380). Its next known owner was the London art dealer and collector John Boykett Jarman (1782-1864). In February 1954 he sold it to John Ruskin who recorded in his diary: ‘On Friday the 24th I got the greatest treasure in all my life: St Louis’ Psalter.’ The stories about Ruskin cutting leaves from the volume, using them for teaching in Oxford or sending them as presents to a friend in Harvard with the promise ‘If they sink in the way, I will send two others’, and those about Sydney Cockerell recovering the dispersed leaves after Ruskin’s death, acquiring the manuscript first for Henry Yates-Thompson in 1904 and then purchasing it for the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1919, are well known. This paper explores an aspect of the manuscript that has been alluded to occasionally, but never properly examined – namely the fate of the Psalter-Hours before Ruskin bought it from Jarman.

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Manuscripts in the Making: Art and Science, vol. 2

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Manuscripts in the Making: Art and Science

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