The Psalter-Hours of Isabelle of France

Black bole

Artists' Materials

The highly burnished gold leaf in the backgrounds of all miniatures and historiated initials was laid over a black-coloured bole which contains calcium and copper. Visible through small losses in the gold leaf, the black bole reveals the main artists’ awareness of the subtle changes in the tonality of the gold leaf produced by varying the colour of its base. In the smaller, ornamental initials, which were painted by assistants, the gold leaf is laid over a white bole, commonly found in 13th-century Parisian manuscripts. Exceptionally rare, black bole was used only in very few deluxe manuscripts, including royal commissions. It appears in the full-page miniatures which one of the artist involved in this Psalter-Hours (Hand C) contributed to the St Louis Psalter (Paris, BnF, MS lat. 10525, fols. 25v-28). 

David prays to God in the upper part of the initial D. Below, a half-naked fool wields a club and eats a cake. A standard image for Psalm 52 in 13th-century French Psalters and Bibles, the fool illustrates the Psalm’s opening verse, written in gold on the right and continuing beneath the image, Dixit insipiens in corde suo non est deus (‘The fool said in his heart: there is no God’). The initial was painted by Hand B.

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