11Story

25 January 2010

Self portrait

 

Sir Geoffrey Luttrell at table [from the Luttrell Psalter]. Unknown artist East Anglia (England), circa 1325-1335 Photograph (of lower register only). Original on fol. 208r, illuminated manuscript 35 x 24 cm © British Library 064550

Early in the 14th century Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (1276-1345) commissioned an illustrated account of the daily life and seasonal and religious round of his family, staff and local villagers in rural Lincolnshire; and he oversaw its production.   The psalter (a book containing psalms, sacred poems) presents Luttrell, in this image sharing a meal with family and retainers, as a man qualifying himself for fortune. Facial likenesses are elusive but individuality and role are marked in clothing, context and in actions performed.   The psalter is a portrait although its subject is not just Luttrell himself but above all the lineage he sought to ensure for the future: a normal strategy for social climbers. In later modernism this strategy includes claims to inherent merit. In the Luttrell Psalter, evidence for merit seems to be outwardly-orientated action with piety there to be noticed: and lives measured in props, even if some forms of dress and conduct may have been more aspirational than actual.

 
 
 

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