Epic, artifice, and audience: The Pierpont Morgan Library's Medieval Picture Bible (MS.M.638) and the Psalter-Hours of Ghuiluys de Boisleux (MS.M.730)

This dissertation is comprised of a pair of case studies that explore how conventions of epic poetry shaped the illumination of the Old Testament in the thirteenth century. The study focuses on two mid-thirteenth century manuscripts, the famous Morgan Library Picture Bible and a lesser known Psalter-Hours in the same library that belonged to a family who supported the French monarchy. It is argued that the Picture Bible is not missing a textual apparatus but that it was intentionally devised as a purely pictorial, textless codex. This position is supported by a consideration of the literary forces that informed the illustration of the Bible in the early thirteenth century and a closer examination of the Picture Bible illuminators' experimental efforts to translate conventions of Old French epic poetry into pictorial form. The study reconstructs the meaning of such a codex in relation to epic poetry.;The second section of the dissertation concentrates on a Psalter-Hours manuscript made precisely around the time that the Picture Bible was made. The Psalter-Hours, made in Arras, provides strong thematic and iconographic parallels for the Picture Bible's David cycle and its repeated scenes of epic combat. Made for a female owner, the Psalter-Hours recalls the critical role of women as patrons and recipients of luxury books in the middle ages, and even suggests that the illustration of certain biblical figures at this moment is indicative of an attempt to speak directly to a female audience. Extrapolating from parallel iconographic evidence of the Psalter-Hours, it is concluded that the Picture Bible's many biblical women---good and bad---stand as indices of the latter manuscript's inherently social courtly function.