The Peterborough Psalter

Gold tooling

Artists' Techniques

Lines and dots were incised in the highly burnished gold background of many illuminations, from the full-page Crucifixion to the small Calendar initials. In the Crucifixion, the tooling accentuates the form of the cross and embellishes the halos of the richly painted figures. The embossing visible on the surface is, however, an unintended consequence of applying punched motifs to the burnished gold Beatus initial on the reverse of the leaf.

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Detail of the green cross under magnification (25x) and (below) FORS spectrum showing the characteristic features of verdigris (steep rise in reflectance 700-1400 nm, absorbance maximum around 706 nm)
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Detail of the Virgin’s mantle under magnification (20x). The craquelure in the yellow area is characteristic of organic materials, which strongly suggests that the pigment is a yellow dye.
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Detail of Christ’s face under magnification (20x). Highlights are created with thick brushstrokes of lead white along the nose and eyelids. Vermilion is used on the cheeks and lips and a light wash of an earth pigment indicates shadows.
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Detail of the sun under magnification (20x), where vermilion provides bright red highlights over an orange base layer painted with red lead, as proved by the presence of both mercury (Hg) and lead (Pb) in the XRF spectrum below.

Crucifixion

The style of the Crucifixion supports a date for the manuscript in the early 1220s. Christ's slender torso, which curves gracefully to one side, breaking the symmetry of the composition, reflects new artistic ideas surfacing at that time. The single nail that pins Christ's overlapping feet is another new motif that gradually replaced the custom of showing two nails, one for each foot.

The pigment used for the green cross is verdigris, a copper-based pigment that appears dark in the infrared image. Green crosses, some plain and others formed of rough timber beams or branches, appear in Crucifixion scenes from the 11th century onwards. Artists used the colour to link the cross with the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden as described in Genesis. Eating the fruit of the Tree of Life guaranteed eternal life, a promise matched by Christ's atoning death and resurrection, which, according to Christian theology, offered redemption and immortality to humanity.

The Virgin's pink mantle is painted with an insect-based organic dye, highlighted with lead white and decorated with red lead and lead white dots. The inner part of the folds were coloured with an organic yellow glaze over lead white. The draperies are defined with thick carbon black outlines (hotspot 2). The tunic is modelled with different shades of blue obtained by mixing ultramarine and lead white in different proportions, which are juxtaposed and separated by black outlines.

Flesh tones are modelled with a light pink mixture of lead white and an earth pigment. Vermilion and lead white provide highlights and a light brown earth pigment is used in the shadows. Facial features, hair and beard are defined with brushstrokes of brown ink (hotspot 3).

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