The Lichtenthal Psalter

The recent discovery of an unknown fourteenth-century English manuscript in a German Cistercian convent has brought to light an exquisite, richly illustrated psalter, which is analysed and illustrated here for the first time. Although this remarkable find in Lichtenthal Abbey, near Baden-Baden, had been identified as belonging to a group of manuscripts associated with the prominent and royally-connected Bohun family, neither its illustrations nor its relationship to other Bohun manuscripts had until now been fully explored. In tracing the history of the Bohun family and their manuscript patronage, Professor Sandler places the Lichtenthal Psalter as a product of the 1380s in company with three other psalters of similar format, each produced by the closely knit groupt of scibes and artists who worked in the Bohun family residence at Pleshley Castle in Essex. She describes in detail the contents of the manuscript, its text and decoration, and offers evocative descriptions and penetrating interpretations of the meticulously depicted images that illustrate the Calendar, the Psalms, and the Office of the Cross. The author also examines in particular the style and execution of the historiated initials and bas-de-page Old Testament scences that illustrate the psalms in a continuous narrative sequence from the Creation to the Life of Moses. She compares these to the pictorial programs of the related Bohun psalters, and provides further evidence for the identification of the scribes and artists whose skill and inventiveness created one of the most outstanding group of illuminated manuscripts in fourteenth-century England. Every full-page miniature in the Lichtenthal Psalter is here reproduced in colour and in the size of the original. In addition there are enlarged detail reproductions in black-and-white of many of the intricate and tiny figure compositions that illustrate the biblical narrative, as well as comparative illustrations of other related Bohun manuscripts. The latter are listed in full, with relevant literature, in an Appendix.