Psalter of Frederick II

Psalter of Frederick II

The extraordinary collection of medieval codices conserved in the Biblioteca Riccardiana of Florence includes a parchment manuscript, inventoried under number 323 and better known as the Psalter of Frederick II. The Libro dei Salmi di Federico II is a little jewel, probably illuminated in some scriptorium of Asia Minor ca. 1235–1237, commissioned by the Swabian Emperor as a wedding gift for his third wife Isabella of England, daughter of King John “Lackland” and sister of Henry III Plantagenet, whom he married at Worms on July 20, 1235. The preparations for the wedding were splendid; the sumptuous dowry consisted of caskets of gold, jewels, necklaces, tableware, and furnishings, and most likely also included the psalter intended to accompany the empress in her daily prayers.

An Imperial Commission

Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250) was one of the most educated rulers of the Middle Ages and his court attracted the greatest artists and scholars of the 13th century. Worthy of its imperial patron, this precious codex strikes the eye because of the chromatic wealth of its miniatures, gold grounds that make them resemble mosaics, the brightness of colors, and a quasi-enameled surface. We have sought to render this brilliance in the reproduction by adopting a special printing technique with stochastic cross-hatching that makes it possible to obtain a continuous tone of coloring, rendering colors, and details with a photographic quality. The successive application of gold dust has made it possible to reproduce, as faithfully as possible, the almost chalky characteristics of gold applied with a brush on the codex sheets, while the natural parchment used to line the book boards renders the medieval flavor of the original binding, unfortunately lost, which was duplicated in the 1800s and still today protects the volume.