Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts

Psalter-Hours of Guiluys de Boisleux
France, Arras, after 1246
MS M.730 fol. 176v

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Initial D:
Male musician playing pipe and tabor, seated with feet crossed on bench, under trilobed architectural frame surmounted by domical roof, at upper left spandrel of initial D decorated with diapered infilling and adjoined by fantastic animal with tail of foliate tendrils enclosing horseman armed with sword at upper right margin, at beginning of Collect at Vespers.
Initial F decorated with diapered infilling and ornament of interlace and fantastic animal, and supported by caryatid as female acrobat, at beginning of Collect at Vespers.
Initial U decorated with diapered infilling and ornament of foliage, and formed by fantastic animal, above male acrobat swinging from rod upside down into open jaws of fantastic animal with tail of foliate tendrils below, at beginning of Psalm 95 (Vulg., 94) at Matins.
Line ending: snail encountering soldier, wearing helmet and chain mail, armed with sword and shield, hurling javelin (Burlesque: Fighting).
Line ending: two heraldic escutcheons, one Boisleux and the other Neuville-Vitasse.
Line ending: man, armed with sword, pursued by rabbit.
Line ending: female warrior, wearing berbette, armed with shield and spear, fighting man armed with spear and shield with heraldry of Neuville-Vitasse with azure label of three, flanked by two escutcheons of gules, a cross argent, and gules, a bordure argent.
Line endings: geometric and foliate ornament.
Text page of Office of the Dead with two Vespers Collects and Psalm 95 (Vulg., 94) at Matins.
Catchword at lower right margin.