Luttrell Psalter
The pages vary in their degree of illumination, but many are richly covered with both decorated text and marginal pictures of saints and Bible stories, and scenes of rural life.
It is considered one of the richest sources for visual depictions of everyday rural life in medieval England,[1] even though the last folio is now lost.
[6] Luttrell, a wealthy land owner, felt his death was coming and wanted to account for all his actions, as is stated in the colophon of the psalter.
[6] To assert his role as patron of the work, the line Dominus Galfridus Louterell me fieri fecit ("Lord Geoffrey Luttrell caused me to be made") appears above the portrait.
[8] The manuscript contains images of beggars and street performers and grotesques, all symbolizing the chaos and anarchy that was present in mediaeval society and feared by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell and his contemporaries.
[10] The manuscript came to public notice in 1794, when miniatures of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, his wife and daughter-in-law were reproduced along with a summary of the book.
However, Weld's bid to sell two family heirlooms, the psalter and the Bedford Book of Hours at Sotheby's came up against a legal obstruction.
Three days before the celebrated illuminated manuscripts were due to go under the hammer, it was discovered by British Museum lawyers that they, and all the heirlooms and 'chattels' in Lulworth Castle, were actually the property of Mrs Mary Angela Noyes, née Mayne, then wife of the poet Alfred Noyes, and earlier widow of Richard Shireburn Weld-Blundell, the Lulworth heir who had been killed in 1916.
The pictorial embellishment of the Psalter shows that the illuminators were artists of vivid perception, strong imaginative faculty, ingenuity and a keen sense of humour, and were closely in touch with the full-bodied homely, racy English life of the period – husbandry, the chase, the use of arms, devotion, domestic, and industrial occupations.
The Psalter contains also the Canticles, Te Deum, Athanasian Creed, Litany of the Saints, and Office of the Dead, preceded by a calendar.
The illustrations within the manuscript display several scenes from Geoffrey Luttrell's life, regular daily activities around the town and many different curious figures combining animal and human parts.
[23] Luttrell wanted the drawings to reflect the current devotional, cultural, political, economic and dynastic aspirations that he and his family had.
[24] One drawing, for example, shows the remodelling of the Irnham parish church, emphasizing how he was preoccupied with his activities in preparation for his death.
[8] Servants preparing food and running errands are depicted along the margins of the manuscript to emphasize that they played a major role both socially and economically.
