The Prophet Ezekiel, Byzantine Psalter Miniature, Antique Print, 1849

Two robed figures against a flat gold ground, one seated and wrapped in violet, the other standing with an arm raised. The sheet is lettered as tenth century Greek work, the prophet Ezekiel receiving inspiration during the night, a miniature taken from the Psalter with Commentaries numbered Greek 139 in the Bibliotheque nationale de Paris. The drawing of the bare feet and the fall of the drapery is classical and quite unlike anything else in this volume.

The plate belongs to the second volume of Lacroix and Sere's Le Moyen Age et la Renaissance, Paris, 1849, a work that set out to describe the manners, trades, sciences, letters and fine arts of Europe between the fall of Rome and the end of the sixteenth century. Each sheet was drawn from the original object or manuscript and printed in chromolithography, a process still new in 1849 and here used with unusual richness.

The Paris Psalter is the most famous Byzantine manuscript in France and the touchstone of what historians call the Macedonian renaissance, when Constantinople returned deliberately to antique models. A buyer of Greek or Orthodox material will know it. The gold ground makes the sheet glow under a picture light and it hangs particularly well in a dark room. The sheet is also one of only two plates in the volume drawn from a Greek rather than a Latin manuscript, which gives it a place of its own in any group hung from this lot. Kellerhoven drew and lithographed it himself, which is uncommon here and shows in the quality of the line.

Even age toning. Marked handling soiling along the bottom, right and top edges. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.