Leaf from a Psalter: Historiated Initial D with The Trinity (c.1310): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Psalter: Historiated Initial D with The Trinity (c.1310) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Master of the Queen Mary Psalter (English).

The work and its context

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

Although English, the design of this psalter page follows the fashion of French book illumination. In particular, the white flesh tones, elegant wavy coiffures, and elongated fingers of the figures relate this leaf to the Queen Mary Psalter, probably the most "Parisian" of all surviving English illuminated manuscripts of the early 1300s. The Queen Mary Psalter is named after the 16th-century English queen who appears to have once owned it. The artistic connections between France and England during this period are puzzling and often show influence moving in both directions. The workshop of the Queen Mary Psalter appears to have been active in East Anglia between 1310 and 1335, though its specific location remains unknown. It presumably competed with workshops in Norwich, Cambridge, Bury St. Edmunds, and the so-called "Fenland" workshops. A large initial D for Dixit dominus domino. . . . (The Lord said unto my Lord. . . . ) introduces the text, the opening of Psalm 109, within which appears the Trinity.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Psalter: Historiated Initial D with The Trinity
• Date: c.1310
• Creator attribution: Master of the Queen Mary Psalter (English)
• Culture: England, East Anglia, early 14th Century
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Each leaf: 26.7 x 17.5 cm (10 1/2 x 6 7/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1999.125

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.

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.