The Psalter of Saint Louis, Judgement and Angels, Antique Prints, 1849

A pair of original antique chromolithographs reproducing miniatures from the Psalter of Saint Louis, sold together and not separately. Both are lettered as thirteenth century facsimiles from the manuscript preserved in the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal in Paris, both were drawn by Schultz and printed by Engelmann et Graf, and the volume's own plate list names their subjects as the Last Judgement and the good and evil angels with the devils. The burnished gold grounds are printed from a separate stone and carry across both sheets. They are two original sheets sold together as one lot, and the set is never split.

The first is the Last Judgement, set inside a great painted initial, with Christ raising his hand at the center, angels blowing trumpets along the upper arc and the dead climbing from their tombs below, all on burnished gold. The second shows good and evil angels moving across a gold ground under a scalloped arcade, with a row of gray devils beneath them, horned, clawed and staring.

This is one of the chromolithographic plates of Le Moyen Age et la Renaissance, second volume, Paris, 1849, edited by Paul Lacroix with Ferdinand Sere as artistic director. The work was among the first large French publications to rely on color lithography throughout, and its plates were drawn directly from manuscripts, textiles, armor and goldsmiths' work in the public collections of Paris, Brussels and the German cities. The Psalter of Saint Louis is the best known French Gothic manuscript outside the windows of the Sainte Chapelle, and these two plates are the only sheets drawn from it in this volume. Judgement on one side and the angels and devils on the other is a genuinely matched subject, and the two were made to be seen together. Hung as a pair they carry real weight on a wall, and the gold catches a picture light beautifully.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along the edges of both sheets. Light foxing in the margins of both sheets. Slight wear at the corners of one of the two sheets.

These are original antique prints, not modern reproductions. This item is sold unframed.