Leaf from a Psalter: Initial D: A Fool Rebuked by God (c. 1300–1320): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Psalter: Initial D: A Fool Rebuked by God (c. 1300–1320) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The decorative marginal outgrowths, or extenders, of this initial include an assortment of drolleries—grotesque, often hybridized little figures that typically engage in amusing and diversionary activities. Drolleries are often shown playing musical instruments. Here one may be seen playing a vielle, an early stringed instrument played with a bow. The profusion of drolleries and whimsical marginalia in illuminated manuscripts, especially psalters, became increasingly popular around 1300, a phenomenon that has been much analyzed by scholars. Probably produced for a pious lay clientele, the margins of these tiny psalters are filled with endlessly varied and often highly animated animals, persons of every occupation (including clerics), hybrids, and monsters. Their function was often satirical and was clearly meant to amuse and give enjoyment. They may have also functioned as a kind of visual cue, enabling a book's user to locate specific pages and texts.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Psalter: Initial D: A Fool Rebuked by God
• Date: c. 1300–1320
• Culture: Northern France or Flanders, St. Omer or Thèrouanne, 14th century
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Leaf: 10.7 x 7.8 cm (4 3/16 x 3 1/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2011.55

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.