Anglo-Norman 'Channel' School
THE NATIVITY, miniature from a psalter [England or perhaps northern France, 2nd half 13th century]
A splendid and expressive example of the Anglo-Norman style of the 13th century, likely from the prefatory cycle of a de luxe psalter.

The miniature exemplifies the Anglo-Norman style of manuscript illumination documented on both sides of the Channel in the 13th century, reflecting the transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic. A harmony of style, known as the Channel School, had flourished in England and northern France since the 11th century, finding perhaps its definitive expression in the 91 full-page miniatures of the Munich Golden Psalter (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 835), made in Oxford in the early 13th century: the present leaf comes from a manuscript painted some decades later, though within the same tradition. Certain elements of its composition, such as the geometric design of the crib holding the infant Christ and the columns supporting the bed of the Virgin, are inherited from the Romanesque style seen across Europe – for reference see the 12th-century German Gospel Lectionary in the British Library (Egerton 809, f.1v) – while the graceful, wide-eyed figures of the Holy Family, posed in exaggerated attitude upon the glowing gold ground, are a testament to the Gothic style that emanated from France in the early 13th century. Comparable depictions of the Nativity can be found in certain English manuscripts, including that on f.3v of the British Library’s Arundel 157, a 13th-century Psalter-Hours, and on f.32 of the Carrow Psalter, an East Anglia production of 1240-1260 (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, M.34), as well as in contemporary French manuscripts.

Provenance:
•ROBERT LEHMAN (1891-1969), banker, philanthropist and collector: his Ms. 122. Lehman assembled one of the most distinguished art collections in the United States, much of which was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art after his death. His fine collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscript leaves represented the major schools of illumination that flourished in Europe, chiefly from the 14th to the 16th century but with notable early examples scattered throughout.

152 x 104mm.

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