Leaf from a Psalter and Prayerbook: Initial E with Ornamental Border Containing a Seated Satyr and a Bird Eating Grapes (recto) (c. 1524): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Psalter and Prayerbook: Initial E with Ornamental Border Containing a Seated Satyr and a Bird Eating Grapes (recto) (c. 1524) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This leaf and the one nearby were excised from the same prayer book that contained ornamental borders on nearly every page. They represent the intricate decoration found throughout the parent volume, its leaves now dispersed. Virtually every border, recto and verso, or front and back, was decorated with liquid gold and highlighted with a variety of flowers, fruits, vegetables, and animals; here a bird eats grapes while seated below is a satyr, or half goat and half man.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Psalter and Prayerbook: Initial E with Ornamental Border Containing a Seated Satyr and a Bird Eating Grapes (recto)
• Date: c. 1524
• Culture: North Germany, Hildesheim (?), 16th century
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera and liquid gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Each leaf: 16.6 x 13.5 cm (6 9/16 x 5 5/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2006.15.a

Collection credit

The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fliegel, Stephen N. The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999.
• Chapin, Mary Weaver. “Music Chez Soi.’” In Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889-1900. Mary Weaver Chapin and Heather Lemonedes Brown, 142-186. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2021.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.