The J. Paul Getty Museum will offer visitors the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience two masterpieces of medieval English art: six dazzling, monumental stained glass figures depicting the Ancestors of Christ from England’s famed Canterbury Cathedral and the St. Albans Psalter, a richly illuminated manuscript that is a landmark of English Romanesque art.
The exhibition of both these bodies of work is possible because of preservation activities. The six glass windows from Canterbury Cathedral have been temporarily removed from the Cathedral’s Great South Window for conservation on the architectural framing. The St. Albans Psalter, on loan from the Cathedral Library in Hildesheim, Germany, has been temporarily unbound for documentation and conservation and will soon be permanently rebound.
These two bodies of works are among the most famous examples of English Romanesque art, representing innovations of 12th-century English painting on a monumental and miniature scale. Both the psalter, created at the beginning of the 12th-century and the stained glass from Canterbury, created at the end of that same century, share the fully modeled and articulated figures, saturated colors and elaborately patterned border decorations that characterize Romanesque painting.
Additional information is available at www.getty.edu.