The Beatus Vir Initial
"Beatus vir qui non abiit..." — King David inside the Psalter's grandest letter.
- Work
- Psalter leaf
- Artist / creator
- Unknown Rhineland illuminator
- Origin & date
- Rhineland, Germany, late 12th–early 13th century
- Held by
- The Walters Art Museum
Format
The full-resolution color-managed file — yours to print, study, and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan's resolution doesn't clear our floor for a physical print, so this piece is offered as a digital download only.
Size
$24.00
The story
King David, crowned and seated with his psaltery, fills the bowl of a historiated initial B — the opening letter of Psalm 1, Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum, "Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked." Because Psalm 1 begins the entire Psalter, its initial traditionally received the most lavish decoration in the book, sometimes consuming a full page on its own; this leaf, made for a woman's private devotion in the Premonstratensian rite, follows that convention with a dense gold-ground border and richly modeled drapery. David's psaltery — the stringed instrument depicted in his hands — gives the Psalter, the biblical book of psalms, its very name. The leaf traveled from Rhineland Germany through the collection of English bibliophile Sir Thomas Phillipps before Henry Walters acquired it for Baltimore.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from The Walters Art Museum’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guaranteed.
Image courtesy of the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Frame
This scan's resolution is offered as a digital download only, so there's no physical size to frame here — shown for reference, true to the piece's own proportions.
