Ingeborg Psalter

Ingeborg Psalter

The final decades of the 12th century marked the absolute culmination of artistic creation in Paris and the surrounding provinces. One of the most significant and luxurious manuscripts of the early Gothic, the Ingeborg Psalter, was made during this period of transition and stylistic change before 1200. The book is named after its first owner Ingeborg, a Danish princess and the spouse of King Philip II August of France, who was expelled by her husband for unknown reasons shortly after their wedding.

A Bible Picture Book

The psalter begins with a richly embellished Beatus initial and the text of the following 150 Psalms is written in a luxury book script called “littera psalteralis”. From a historic point of view, this type of manuscript constitutes a precursor of the book of hours which flourished in the so-called “livre d’heures” of Flemish painting in the 14th and 15th centuries. The beginnings of both psalms and other texts are marked with initials, most of which contain ornamental decoration. Some of the psalms are ornate with large figural initials depicting scenes from the life of David.

51 Golden Miniatures

The real significance of the Ingeborg Psalter, however, lies in the large number of unusually elaborate miniatures whose decisively new style and design clearly distinguished it from Romanesque predecessors and greatly influenced the art of illumination in the Gothic period. 27 miniature pages, most of which show two scenes superimposed on one another, depict important episodes from the lives of Abraham and Moses. They are followed by the root of Jesse marking the transition between the Old and the New Testaments, and further by miniatures based on themes taken from the life of Christ, ranging from the Annunciation to the Assumption, from Pentecost to the Last Judgement and the Death and Coronation of the Virgin, down to scenes extracted from the legend of Theophilus. In this popular medieval epic, the sinner Theophilus devotes himself to the Devil and is saved by the Virgin Mary, thus introducing the Faustian motif for the very first time.