Fund blamed for manuscript sale

The Macclesfield Psalter was produced in Suffolk in the 1320s

Britain's largest arts charity has blamed the Heritage Lottery Fund for enabling a 14th Century English manuscript to be sold to a US museum.

The Macclesfield Psalter was sold to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles for £1,685,600 in June.

The National Arts Collection Fund said the lottery funding body should have given Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum a grant to retain the "remarkable" item.

The charity has donated £500,000 in a bid to keep the manuscript in the UK.

Export delayed

The National Arts Collection Fund (Art Fund) originally pledged £400,000 to help the Cambridge Museum retain the manuscript, but it was sold after the Heritage Lottery Fund turned down the museum's bid for a grant.

The government subsequently deferred the export of the item until 10 November, in the hope that it would remain in the UK.

Art Fund director David Barrie said the "very rare and very beautiful" manuscript was "quintessence of English heritage".

The volume contains 14 miniature paintings and decorated borders

"For sheer inventiveness, technical mastery and historical importance it can scarcely be rivalled.

"It would be utterly inexplicable if we, as a country, didn't do everything in our power to secure it."

He said he was "not surprised" that the government subsequently intervened in the sale.

"We feel that the trustees of the Heritage Lottery Fund felt obliged to apply its grant criteria too literally, resulting in the loss of this wonderful piece of history," Mr Barrie said.

He hopes that other organisations will help raise the £1.7m required to keep the manuscript in the UK.

Miniature paintings

The Macclesfield Psalter was produced in Suffolk in the 1320s, probably at Gorleston, at a time when East Anglia was one of the foremost artistic centres in Europe.

The small 252-leaf volume contains 14 miniature paintings and hundreds of decorated borders and marginal scenes.

Images include a dog dressed as a bishop, an ape giving medical advice to a bear and a rabbit riding a hound.

We have always recognised the value of this wonderful manuscript Heritage Lottery Fund

The Heritage Lottery Fund said it "welcomed" the charity's commitment towards saving the Macclesfield Psalter.

"We have always recognised the value of this wonderful manuscript but were unable to support an application from the Fitzwilliam Museum earlier this year as it failed to meet two of our key requirements for access and education," it stated.

"If we receive another application for funding from either the Heritage Lottery Fund or the National Heritage Memorial Fund, we will do what we can to reach a decision within the tight deadlines imposed by the export deferral."