A superb late fifteenth-century miniature of King David from a French Book of Hours. The image of David, with his harp, kneeling in prayer, introduces the opening of the Seven Penitential Psalms, of which King David was traditionally identified as the author. The quality of the miniature is very fine; the king's face, drapery and the naturalistic landscape in which he kneels are all delicately rendered. The intense colours, differentiated landscape, and the elaborate border decoration of acanthus and gold leaves and flowers on swirling hairline stems all point to an artist in southern France.

A superb late fifteenth-century miniature of King David from a French Book of Hours. The image of David, with his harp, kneeling in prayer, introduces the opening of the Seven Penitential Psalms, of which King David was traditionally identified as the author. The quality of the miniature is very fine; the king's face, drapery and the naturalistic landscape in which he kneels are all delicately rendered. The intense colours, differentiated landscape, and the elaborate border decoration of acanthus and gold leaves and flowers on swirling hairline stems all point to an artist in southern France.

The group of Seven Penitential Psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143) is particularly expressive of sorrow and repentance for sin, and was first given the name by Saint Augustine of Hippo: the title was originally only associated with the fifty-first psalm, 'Miserere', the psalm which was conventionally used to close daily morning service.

King David also appears here as a model of penitence: after his commission of the dual crimes of adultery, with Bathsheba, and the murder of her husband Uriah, by sending him to be killed in battle, David was rebuked by the prophet Nathan and reprimanded by God. He repented and withdrew to live in exile, devoting himself to prayer.

The miniature dates from the end of the fifteenth century, and is a reminder that even after the invention of moveable print and the Gutenberg revolution, the older tradition of manuscript transmission was still the dominant medium of the period, and that the traditions of artistry associated with the illumination of manuscripts were still of the highest quality.