Psalterium

Collection History

The New York Public Library possesses one of the largest and finest collections of medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts in North America, yet its manuscript holdings are scarcely known to scholars, much less to a wide public audience. Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts are vehicles of the collective memory of western European culture, and provide a material connection between the scribes, illuminators, and patrons who produced these works and the audiences who view them today.

The works represent diverse genres, from Bibles and missals to romance literature and science texts. Dating from the turn of the 10th century until well into the period of the Renaissance, these works give vivid testimony to the creative impulses of the often nameless craftsmen who continually discovered new ways of animating the contents of hand-produced books through inventive and sometimes exuberant manipulations of all the elements of the book: form and format, layout, script, decoration, illustration, and binding.

Drawn from the Library's Spencer Collection and the Manuscripts and Archives Division, these works focus on the 9th through the 16th centuries -- seven hundred years of profound political, ecclesiastical, social, and intellectual change in Western Europe and the world. Among these rare items are a 10th-century Ottonian manuscript, with its imitation of Byzantine textile with gold decoration; the Towneley Lectionary, illuminated by Giulio Clovio (once praised as the "Michelangelo of small works"), which originated in Rome and probably belonged to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese; and a late 15th-century Book of Hours, which represents the leading style of illumination from Besançon, one of the French Regional Schools.

Background

"The Digital Scriptorium" originated in the mid-1990s as an image database, intended to unite scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. NYPL curators have augmented the Digital Scriptorium's primary documentation of NYPL's contribution of 259 manuscript parts with images of the works' most significant illuminations. Some works in this digital presentation also appeared in the exhibition, "The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at The New York Public Library," held October 21, 2005 - February 12, 2006 in the Library's D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall.

- Collection History and Background text excerpted from the press release and exhibition catalog descriptions for "The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at The New York Public Library."

Related Resources

Alexander, Jonathan J. G., James H. Marrow, and Lucy Freeman Sandler. The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at The New York Public Library. (2005)

NYPL. "The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at The New York Public Library." (2005-2006) <http://www.nypl.org/research/calendar/exhib/hssl/hsslexhibdesc.cfm?id=354>

University of California, Berkeley. "The Digital Scriptorium." (c1996-2004) <http://www.digital-scriptorium.org>

Collection Data

Description
Psalter, with Preface by Peter Lombard, the Twelve Canticles, the Litany of the Saints and Nine Collects.
Names
Tickhill, John (Scribe)
Dates / Origin
Date Created: 1310 (Approximate)
Library locations
Spencer Collection
Shelf locator: Spencer Coll. MS. 26
Genres
Manuscripts
Illuminations
Notes
Ownership: Written at the Augustinian Priory of Worksop (Radnor) in Nottinghamshire, by John Tickhill, prior of the monastery from 1303-14. Fourteen early coats of arms on various pages. The Marquess of Lothian collection. His sale (1932) to Rosenbach.
Content: 30 lines per page (38 on ff. 3-6) in two columns, ruled in blackish-brown ink. Collation: quire I has 2 folios, which were probably added in the fifteenth century. The remaining quires, II-XX, have eight folios each. Prickings visible.
Content: D.D. Egbert argues that the psalter was probably executed while John Tickhill was prior of Worksop, between 1303 and 1314, and perhaps more precisely to ca. 1310. See Egbert, ch. 1, for discussion of evidence. Last quire in a different hand?
Citation/reference: De Ricci, 1340. Egbert volume. Library dossier. Listed in Digital Scriptorium, University of California, Berkeley.
Content: Initials of various sizes and types of decoration, border decoration, rubrics, penwork, etc. Decorations are done in many colors, and much gold leaf is used. Decorations were not completed -- those later in the manuscript are missing text or coloring.
Content: Richly decorated with biblical scenes at the foot of each column, historiated initials, grotesques, animals and human faces.
Content: The final quarter of the manuscript is decorated incompletely. Photographs and slides exist of all folios of this manuscript. The foliation only goes to f. 154; it skips f. 2 and is thereafter incorrect, but for convenience it will be used here.
Biographical/historical: Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts are vehicles of the collective memory of western European culture, and provide a material connection between the scribes, illuminators, and patrons who produced these works and the audiences who view them today. The works represent diverse genres, from Bibles and missals to romance literature and science texts. Dating from the turn of the 10th century until well into the period of the Renaissance, these works give vivid testimony to the creative impulses of the often nameless craftsmen who continually discovered new ways of animating the contents of hand-produced books through inventive and sometimes exuberant manipulations of all the elements of the book: form and format, layout, script, decoration, illustration, and binding. Drawn from the Spencer Collection and the Manuscripts and Archives Division, the New York Public Library’s collections of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts focus on the 9th through the 16th centuries -- seven hundred years of political, ecclesiastical, social, and intellectual change in Western Europe and the world.
Physical Description
Extent: Ff. viii + 155 + vi : 327 x 221 mm.
Parchment
Type of Resource
Still image
Text
Identifiers
NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b22812977
Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 83b5c840-c6ba-012f-2564-58d385a7bc34
Show filters Hide filters
20 results found