Leaf from a Psalter, with a large historiated initial, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment [northern France (probably Rouen), mid-thirteenth century]

Single leaf, with a large historiated initial 'C' (opening Cantate domino canticum ..., Psalm 97), in thin pale pink bars, enclosing a green panel heightened with white circles, enclosing a group of tonsured monks standing either side of an open book on a green lectern and singing, all before a brightly burnished gold ground, the whole initial on blue grounds decorated by rows of red dots, the whole within a gold frame, two other large initials in gold on blue and pink grounds, one-line initials in gold or blue with contrasting penwork, line-fillers in same, paragraph marks in blue or red encased in penwork, single column of 25 lines of a high-grade early gothic bookhand (Psalm 96:7-99:3), with ornamental cadels to lowermost line, one small hole, some folds and scuffs, the large initial and another on reverse rubbed in places, overall fair and presentable condition, 248 by 170mm.

Provenance:
1. The parent manuscript was most probably produced in Rouen for a Franciscan convent between the years 1235 and 1255: its Litany contains SS. Romanus and Ouen, and has Francis at the head of the confessors. St. Elizabeth of Hungary, canonised in 1235, is in the original hand, but St. Clare, canonised in 1255, is an early addition.

2. William Tasker, nineteenth-century American collector; reappearing Sotheby's, 17 June 1997, lot 54, with other books once belonging to him in lots 45 and 63, 67 and 75.

3. Andrew Stewart of Gillingham, bookdealer, and offered as individual leaves in his cats. 50, 53, 57 and 60 (1998-2001); another leaf was offered by Maggs Bros., cat. 1283, Illuminations (1999), no. 1.

4. This leaf from the collection of Roger Martin (1939-2020) of Grimsby.