Canterbury Redivivus: MS Junius 11 and the Utrecht Psalter

• Autores: Herbert R. Broderick
• Localización: Artibus et historiae: an art anthology, ISSN 0391-9064, Nº. 88, 2023
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The purpose of this paper is to re-establish Christ Church, Canterbury, as the probable place of origin of the creation of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Junius 11, the so-called ‘Caedmon Manuscript’, of c. 1000 CE, both text and illustrations, based on a close analysis of the relationship of several specific iconographic and compositional motifs in its illustrations ‘appropriated’ by the principal artist involved in its creation from the illustrations of the ninth-century Carolingian Utrecht Psalter that is known to have been at Canterbury by the year 1000. The primary goal of the visual analysis of specific motifs in Junius 11 is to show that the pen and ink drawings currently intercalated in the text were more likely to have been original ad hoc creations of the first of two artists in the Christ Church scriptorium rather than, as has been suggested, copied from an earlier ninth-century illustrated exemplar produced in an unknown Carolingian venue on the continent. The ultimate goal of the article is to demonstrate the creativity and resourcefulness of the Anglo-Saxon artist(s) responsible for the illustrations in this unique manuscript of vernacular religious poetry.