The Macclesfield Psalter
At the Fitzwilliam Museum
The Macclesfield Psalter is an outstanding example of medieval
art from East Anglia, which boasted one of the most creative schools
of painting in the fourteenth century. Produced around 1330, it
is at the heart of a group of East Anglian manuscripts that combine
local traditions with the most innovative trends in European painting.
Devotional imagery, charming glimpses of every-day life, and keen
observations of nature co-exist with ribald humour, extreme human
emotions and creations of the wildest imagination.
This is the most important English illuminated manuscript to be
rediscovered in living memory. In addition to the Fitzwilliam Museum’s
own funds and contributions from its Friends, major grants from
the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the National Art Collections
Fund, the Cadbury Trust, and the Friends of the National Libraries,
and generous donations from the public in response to the appeal
launched by the National Art Collections Fund secured the future
of the Macclesfield Psalter in a public institution in this country
and in the region where it was produced seven centuries ago.
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