Cleveland Museum of Art

Leaf from a Psalter: The Crucifixion

Date

c. 1300–1330

Medium

ink, tempera and gold on vellum

Culture

Flanders, Liège, 14th century

Department

Medieval Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The diocese of Liège was extremely active as a production center for psalters and psalter-hours from the second half of the 1200s through about 1330. This market, no doubt, was stimulated by the need of women for a devotional text. As women were drawn to the convents of religious orders such as the Dominicans, the Beguines and Begards, and the Poor Clares, they had need of a book that would provide them with suitable devotional material. The psalter was the book that these women, many of whom were high-born, most commonly used. The present leaf, with its monumental miniature of the Crucifixion, and like many surviving 13th-century psalters, may have thus provided visual focus for the prayers of a woman in a convent setting. Customarily, the level of quality and the extent to which these books were decorated depended upon the means of the patron.

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