This facsimile of The Royal Psalter of Sainte-Chapelle, an illuminated manuscript originally made in Paris in the early thirteenth century, is filled with a delightful variety of geometric, floral, and zoomorphic line fillers.
Medieval scribes and artists filled the empty space between lines with humor, providing a break from often serious texts and also creating visual balance and symmetry. We suspect that they must have had a lot of fun creating these quirky creatures.
The Fine Arts Library holds a collection of over 300 full-color facsimiles of illuminated manuscripts from a wide range of periods and traditions. The collection primarily includes religious texts, but representatives of secular works on poetry and literature, astronomy, travel, sketchbooks, and science and medicine are also included.
