EXHIBITION: Canterbury and St. Albans: Treasures from Church and Cloister, Los Angeles, The J Paul Getty Museum, at TheGetty Center, 20 September 2013 – 2 February 2014.
This premier Getty Center exhibition celebrates two rare masterpieces of English medieval art: stained glass from Canterbury Cathedral and pages from the St. Albans Psalter, an illuminated book of psalms.
Uniting the intimate art of book illumination with monumental glass painting, this exhibition explores how specific texts, prayers, and environments shaped medieval viewers’ understanding of pictures in the era of artistic renewal following the Norman Conquest of England. Life-size paintings on glass depict the ancestors of Christ, and richly ornamented illuminations translate biblical texts into luminous pictures.
The panels of glass have been temporarily de-installed and pages from the St. Albans Psalter, unbound—allowing visitors to experience these works at a proximity enjoyed by few in their long and storied histories. The windows would have been visible to monks sitting in the communal space of the cathedral’s choir, and the psalter was meant to be held in one’s hands as an object of personal devotion.
The early 12th-century manuscript’s graceful, powerfully drawn figures and saturated colors mark the arrival of the Romanesque style of painting in England. The windows from Canterbury, made toward the end of the century, represent this style at its apex and are the finest examples of English Romanesque glass that survive.
The St. Albans Psalter is one of the most extraordinary manuscripts produced in 12th-century England. Written in Latin, the St. Albans Psalter contains more than two hundred historiated initials with pictures that give visual form to the accompanying prayers. Letterforms teem with human figures, animals, and demonic creatures that provide a literal illustration of particular lines from the psalms.
Completed within a decade of 1130, the book is prefaced by an extended cycle of full-page pictures of Old Testament scenes and events from the life of Christ. Forty luxuriously painted, full-page illuminations serve as a preface to the written prayers in the St. Albans Psalter.
Devoid of text, these expressive images provided the reader with an imaginative entry into biblical history. These evocative pictures would have prompted the book’s reader to recall memorized texts, such as the Gospels, or to recite prayers.
The ornate initials that enliven the remainder of the book all contain pictures that give literal form to the complex and beautiful poetry of the psalms. Decorated with gold and luminous colors, the psalter’s luxurious illuminations are unequaled by any surviving English manuscripts from this period.
The identity of the individuals thought to have created and used this book cannot be known for certain, but it is generally believed that Geoffrey Gorron, the Norman abbot of St. Albans from 1119 to 1146, commissioned the manuscript— possibly as a gift for his friend and advisor, the nun Christina of Markyate.