Psalter with Cantica, German

On the front pastedown of this codex, a leaf with a pen-drawing has been pasted, showing King David from the Old Testament. The bearded old man is sitting cross-legged on a simple bench used as a throne and is playing the harp. Originally, the drawing was the first leaf of the manuscript, which contains a German version of the Psalms composed by King David. When a new binding was created in the last quarter of the 15th century, the leaf was cut out and pasted on the inside of the front cover.

The drawing and the only decorated initial in the manuscript are ascribed to the so-called Alsatian workshop of 1418. In this
workshop, a predecessor of the better-known Hagenau workshop of Diebold Lauber,
books were produced in series, i.e. without having been commissioned by a
patron, to be sold to potential readers. Most manuscripts contained German
texts illustrated with coloured pen-drawings in a simple style.