Illumination and Sculpture in Thirteenth-Century Amiens: The Invention of the Body of Saint Firmin in the Psalter and Hours of Yolande of Soissons

Abstract

The Psalter and Hours of Yolande of Soissons, a manuscript dating from the late thirteenth century that is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library (M729), is a richly illuminated example of the private devotional book that became increasingly popular in the later Middle Ages. This manuscript uses thirty-nine full-page miniatures framed by elaborate architectural borders, sixty-four historiated initials, and numerous borders filled with foliage ornament, grotesques, human figures, and animals to articulate the combined texts of the Psalter and the Book of Hours. Both the quantity and the high quality of decoration make this book an outstanding example of French Gothic illumination, but, although a localization at Amiens has often been suggested, questions about its exact place of origin have never been adequately resolved.1 The identification of the subject of one miniature in M729 and the comparison of this illustration with another representation of the same event, however, can contribute to a solution of the...