The St. Albans Psalter: Painting and Prayer in Medieval England

The St. Albans Psalter is one of the most important, famous, and puzzling books produced in twelfth-century England. It was probably created between 1120 and 1140 at St. Albans Abbey, located on the site where Alban, England’s first saint, was martyred.

The manuscript’s powerfully drawn figures and saturated colors are distinct from those in previous Anglo-Saxon painting and signal the arrival of the Romanesque style of illumi...