download

ART 501
slanting eyes, with their strongly marked pupils, gaze always
sideways. It was a centre with wide influences: certainly the
painter
ofthe frescoes at Westminster was well conversant with
the
style; a noble book, the Oscott Psalter, has similar echoes,
and might almost be from the hand of the fresco
painter; a
group ofApocalypses, notably one in Trinity College, Canv
bridge (MS. R. 16. 2), andoneintheBibliothequeNationale,
Paris (M.S. fr. 403), also have stylistic connexions with the
St. Albans School. The illustrated pages bound in with a later
Psalter, MS. K. 26 of St. John's College, Cambridge, may be
taken as the climax of this style before it loses its individuality
in the general acceptance of the rhythm, poses, and physio^
gnomies of French predominance (PL 102 a).
Illustrated Apocalypses, with their scenes ofthe terrors ofthe
Last Days, the Rider on the White Horse, the Manyheaded
Beast, the Mouth of Hell, enjoyed a great vogue at the end of
the century. Their sensational but symbolic incidents replaced
in popular favour the bestiaries, which had long catered for
similar interests and in the early years of the century had at'
tracted some ofthe ablest artists. One ofthe Apocalypses (MS.
Douce 1 80 in the Bodleian Library), partially composed of
finished paintings, partially of uncompleted drawings, must
receive special mention, for its angel scenes are among the
loveliest of English conceptions and have a placid, dreamlike
beauty seldom equalled.
More genuinely Gothic in its small, swaying figures and its
closely wrought tracery is the Windmill Psalter (now in the
Pierpont Morgan Library, MS. 19). The calendar is missing
and it is hard to date it at all exactly: but its vigorous figure-'
drawing suggests thirteenth' rather than fourteentlvcentury
work, and its draperies have something ofthe metallic q uality of
an earlier
age. Thework ofan able and original artist, its famous
initial to the first Psalm, with its fine mesh ofpen work, may be
taken as bridging the passage from the Salisbury School to the
ofthe first halfofthe four'
great highly decorated manuscripts
teenth
century. These fall into three main groups, the East
Anglian, with the Ormesby and Gorleston Psalters as ex>