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Paris Psalter.

Byzantine illuminated manuscript. Comprised of 449 folios (360*260 mm; Paris, Bib. N., MS. gr. 139), it contains the Psalter with a catena. It has occupied a key position in the study of Byzantine art since the late 19th century. The prefatory image of the youthful shepherd David, in the guise of Orpheus, charming the natural world and accompanied by a personification of Melody (fol. 1v; see fig.), bears comparison to late Roman works in the Hellenistic tradition. Once thought to be a product of the 6th or 7th century AD and hence to some extent still in touch with antiquity, Weitzmann and Buchthal, working independently, redated the manuscript convincingly to the 10th century. It thus stands as the apogee of a highly self-conscious classicizing trend in Byzantine art, termed by Weitzmann the ‘Macedonian Renaissance’. Some controversy remains over whether the 14 surviving full-page miniatures reproduce older images (Buchthal) or were newly created in the 10th century from older elements (Weitzmann).

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