Detailed Historiation Showing Chimes Playing

AN ILLUMINATED VELLUM MANUSCRIPT LEAF WITH AN ESPECIALLY APPEALING HISTORIATED INITIAL, FROM AN EARLY PSALTER IN LATIN.

TEXT FROM PSALMS 77-80.

(13th century). 184 x 130 mm (7 1/4 x 5 1/8"). Double column, 55 lines of text in a fine gothic book hand.

Attractively matted. Rubrics in red, verse initials in blue or red, verso with three two-line capitals in red or blue with curling penwork extensions in the contrasting color, the same side WITH A SIX-LINE HISTORIATED INITIAL SHOWING KING DAVID PLAYING THE CHIMES, AND WITH A GRAY CRANE SWALLOWING A FROG PERCHED ON THE UPPER LEFT CORNER OF THE INITIAL, the depiction of this avian meal extending up the center margin for 14 lines (about 35 mm.). Marginal corrections done in a contemporaneous hand and placed within a blue border; Psalm numbers written in the margin in a different early hand; columns neatly numbered at the top by a 15th century(?) owner. Tail edge slightly trimmed, just touching the tip of one extension (though the margins are generous), recto with faint evidence of mounting tape, trivial soiling, otherwise a fine, fresh leaf, very pleasingly decorated and well preserved, with no noticeable erosion in the charming historiated initial.

Fitted into the narrow central margin is an amusing drollery, a skinny crane with limp wings, toes splayed out, long throat lifted, and open beak pointing skyward. In the bird's mouth a tiny manikin, whose appearance on closer inspection suggests a frog, waves its limbs in alarm. One of the stork's heels rests on the historiated initial, which depicts David playing the chimes. The musician king is shown with a short beard and raises a hammer vigorously to strike the chimes. The scene appropriately illustrates the joyous opening of the Psalm, "sing aloud to God our strength." This psalm in its entirety, as well as the texts of the two preceding psalms, is contained on this page. While the initial is of greatest interest for its revealing picture of a key Medieval musical instrument, it also is fraught with allegorical content. According to the 13th century manuscript known as the "Aberdeen Bestiary," our crane symbolizes the "soul of man sustained by transitory things [but] rejoicing in the eternal"; its gray feathers represent penitence, whereas white feathers would indicate purity. It is eating a frog which, like the snake, was considered a symbol of evil. (CBM1012)