picture data:

Image 659 (This image by courtesy of Sotheby's) From the recently rediscovered Macclesfield Psalter (c.1320-30), probably from Gorleston, Norfolk, and closely related to the Gorleston Psalter. This opening marks one of the major textual divisions in the Macclesfield Psalter, the beginning of the Office of the Dead. The historiated initial 'P' ('Placebo') encloses a deathbed scene against a gold background: the dying man lies in bed under a coverlet as Death, in the form of a shrouded skeleton, stabs him in the chest with a lance. Behind, the man's grieving widow wrings her hands. Top left, in a roundel, Christ blesses the scene. In the roundel below a man with a sword gestures to a young man (perhaps a family plot over the inheritance). Lower left: the bearded, green-mitred face of a bishop. In the top border, faces of a man and woman. Across the bottom of the pages: a man takes a tumble from his horse, and (right) a naked figure with a prominently bared bottom leans over holding a bowl into which a naked man is urinating.

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