Utrecht Psalter
The psalter spent the period between about 1000 to 1640 in England, where it had a profound influence on Anglo-Saxon art, giving rise to what is known as the "Utrecht style".
The latter text was the subject of intense study by Thomas Duffus Hardy and others after scholarly interest in the psalter grew in the 19th century.
There was probably at least an author portrait of David at the start, and the surviving text begins with a large initial with insular-style interlace (picture at top).
Earlier there were derivative works in other media; similar groups of figures appear in a Carolingian engraved crystal in the British Museum (the Lothair Crystal, stylistically very different) and metalwork, and some late Carolingian ivories repeat figure compositions found in the Utrecht psalter (Calkins, 211).
The miniatures consist of outline drawings in plain bistre, a technique which gained popularity in the Carolingian Renaissance; it was cheaper than full coloured illustrations and quicker to produce.
However the Gospel book still remained the main focus of illumination at this period, and the Utrecht Psalter is highly unusual both in the number of illustrations, their size, and the large groups of small figures they contain.
The style of the outline drawings is dramatic, marked by activity, leaping creatures and fluttering folds of drapery set in faintly sketched landscape backgrounds stretching the full span of a page.
Some have argued it was designed to enable easier memorization of the psalm texts by associating every line with a striking image, in accordance with classical and medieval mnemonic arts (Gibson-Wood, 12–15).
However, these composite images sometimes go beyond a purely literal reading of the text, incorporating New Testament scenes or motifs from Christian iconography (Pächt, 168–170).
Images are unframed, often varied and original in iconography, showing a "liveliness of mind and independence of convention" not found in the more formal books (Hinks, 117).
Other members of the group are the Golden Psalter of St. Gall and the Drogo Sacramentary, which made the important innovation of placing most illustrations in inhabited initials.
Meyer Schapiro is among those who have proposed that the Psalter copied illustrations from a Late Antique manuscript; apart from an original perhaps of the 4th or 5th centuries, details of the iconography led him to believe in an intermediary "Latin model" of after about 700 (Shapiro, 77, 110 and passim).
According to Getrud Schiller, the manuscript has the first Western images to show Christ dead on the cross, with eyes closed,[4] though it must be said it is hard to tell from such small drawings.
The psalter's creed had been mentioned by James Ussher in his 1647 De Symbolis when the manuscript was part of the Cotton library, but it was gone by 1723 (Vinton, 161).
The Psalter is bound with 12 leaves of a different Gospel book written in uncial characters with a text similar to the Codex Amiatinus.
