3-044-280 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Wenceslaus Psalter, about 1250-1260. Additional Info: Collecting all 150 Psalms of the Old Testament along with other devotional texts, psalters were among the most popular devotional books of the Middle Ages. Illuminators and scribes made the Wenceslaus Psalter in Paris at a time when Parisian Gothic art had international appeal. Within a generation of its creation, a Bohemian nobleman, perhaps King Wenceslaus III, acquired it from an earlier owner. The Wenceslaus Psalter features over 130 narrative scenes from the Old and New Testaments and eight historiated initials painted with generous quantities of gold leaf and costly pigments. The style of illumination, with its finely drawn figures and palette dominated by red, blue, and gold, is typical of Parisian Gothic work in the 1250s. The layout of each page, with painted initials at the beginning of each verse and decorative line endings at the end of each poetic line is also characteristic of the period.