The So-Called Byzantine Diptych in the Winchester Psalter, British Library, MS Cotton Nero C. IV

One of the most outstanding features of the Winchester Psalter, British Library, MS Cotton Nero C. IV, is the inclusion of two icon-like images of the Virgin in its lengthy prefatory picture cycle. An iconographic analysis of the miniatures provides new evidence that this so-called Byzantine Diptych was not a faithful copy of a double Byzantine icon, as is generally believed, but the inventive creation of a western artist familiar with the Byzantine pictorial and iconographic traditions. The Byzantine Diptych is not to be explained as the copy of a lost Byzantine objet d'art which had reached England in some way or other, but as the work of an English artist who traveled east, perhaps as far as the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. The function of the Byzantine images in the Psalter involves an emphasis on the Virgin's evolving role as the most powerful intercessor, as revealed not only by observing the artist's awareness of Byzantine iconographic formulas and their meaning, but also by the examination of nine Marian prayers at the end of the Winchester manuscript.