The Macclesfield Psalter

Item date: Early 14th century
Grant Value: 10,000
Item cost: 1,700,000
Item cost pre-decimal: NULL
Item date acquired: 2004
Item institution: Fitzwilliam Museum
Town/City: Cambridge
County: Cambridgeshire

The Macclesfield Psalter is a work of art of exceptional beauty. Its 250 leaves are painted with exquisite finesse, page after page of precious pigments and gold. It is an outstanding example of medieval art from East Anglia, which boasted the most characteristically English school of painting and illumination during the fourteenth century. East Anglian manuscripts combine devotional imagery and closely observed nature with charming depictions of every-day life and grotesque creations of the wildest imagination. The Macclesfield Psalter displays numerous examples of each and offers invaluable insights into the relationship between some of the most important contemporary manuscripts. Produced around 1330, it is the missing link between the finest East Anglian manuscripts of the period 1300-1330, the Gorleston Psalter (London, British Library) and the Douai Psalter, which was almost destroyed during the Great War (Douai, Bibliothèque municipale).

Item Provenance
The Earls of Macclesfield but completely unknown until sold on 22 June 2004. Bought after an export stop and a public appeal.