Resumen de "The Wine in the Vines and the Foliage in the Roots": Representations of David in the Durham Cassiodorus
The images of David in the 8th-century Northumbrian manuscript known as the Durham Cassiodorus comprise a thoughtful visualization of the author's ideas. The text is the earliest extant witness to Cassiodorus's Expositio Psalmorum and contains the only example of a drastic abbreviation. It is also the only version of Cassiodorus's commentary to include illustrations—two full-page miniatures of David. Previous studies of the manuscript have argued that the decoration was inspired by illustrated psalters, as if the commentary were trying to resemble the type of book that it commented upon; however, this claim requires postulating a long-lived tradition of psalter decoration for which there is no extant evidence. In fact, the images are carefully constructed representations of the specific way that Cassiodorus characterized David in his commentary; they represent a visual epitome, one that both complements and supplements the textual abbreviation. An appendix presents a transcription of Cassiodorus's commentary to Psalm 3.
