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Melisende Psalter.

Richly decorated Latin Psalter (London, BL, Egerton MS. 1139), probably commissioned for but not by Queen Melisende, wife of Fulk V of Anjou, King of Jerusalem (reg 1131–43), in the scriptorium of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (c. 1135). When it was bought by the British Museum in 1845, it was said to have come from the Grande Chartreuse, the mother house of the Carthusian Order, in Grenoble. There are 24 prefatory New Testament illustrations (fols 1r–12v) by an artist who signed one of the folios, 12v, in Latin Basilius me fecit. Although Basilius was apparently of Western origin, he had a Greek name and was thoroughly steeped in the Byzantine painting tradition (for illustration of fol. 9v, see JERUSALEM, LATIN KINGDOM OF, fig. 2). The 12 roundels with Signs of the Zodiac in the calendar (fols 13v–19r) are, however, painted in a fluent Romanesque style by a different illuminator. Yet another technique and style can be seen in the eight exquisite historiated and illuminated initials at the Psalter divisions (fols 23v–177r). These are reminiscent of earlier work from Montecassino Abbey and combine English, Italian and Islamic motifs. A fourth illuminator, who imitated the Byzantine style of Basilius but in a Romanesque idiom, painted the portraits of the saints accompanying the prayers composed for a lay woman at the end of the codex (fols 177v–218r). The remarkable ivory covers, with scenes from the Life of King David and from the Psychomachia carved on one side and a King Performing Acts of Mercy on the other, reflect the royal patronage of the manuscript. Byzantine royal iconography is combined with the Western imagery of the Virtues and Vices and the theme of the acts of mercy in a Byzantine–Islamic style. A purely Byzantine silk embroidered with a polystavrion design of equal-armed crosses in red, green and blue completes the binding on the spine of the book. This rich mélange of East and West is characteristic of Crusader art, of which this manuscript is the finest 12th-century example.

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  Reproduced by kind permission of Macmillan Publishers Limited, publishers of The Grove Dictionary of Art.
  © Copyright 2000 Macmillan Publishers Limited.
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