Book Description

One of the major examples of 14th-century English illumination, the Psalter of Robert de Lisle is among the outstanding treasures in the British Library. The new paperback edition includes the complete illustration cycle reproduced in colour, each miniature being accompanied by the same detailed introductory text as in the original edition. The illustrations are preceded by a compre- hensive introduction treating the style and iconography of the miniatures in the context of contemporary English painting, analysing the pictorial and textual components of the unusual and elaborate moral and theological dia- grams, and offering conclusions about patronage, date and provenance. An appendix provides a handlist of more than thirty manuscripts containing the same group of diagrams, known as the Speculum theologie, with a group of additional copies research since the first edition. This edition also has a new preface and postscript which evaluate recent research bearing on the manuscript, as well as an updated bibliography. 'The Psalter is one of the masterpieces of English Gothic Illumination from the first half of the four- teenth century ... Sandler's book is a welcome contribution to the Literature.'