An illuminated manuscript produced in Constantinople around…

An illuminated manuscript produced in Constantinople around 950 (later famous as the Paris Psalter) displays its classical borrowings in the most famous of its miniatures, a portrait of David composing the Psalms, playing the harp at the side of the seated female figure of "Melody", set in a lush pastoral landscape closely paralleling the Hellenistic-Roman art of Pompeii.

Around this central group are the figure of Echo, various animals charmed by music, and even a male figure symbolizing the town of Bethlehem.

The whole composition was likely modeled on a Greco-Roman wall painting representing Orpheus charming the world with his music.

Together with Basil I's Homilies of St. Gregory Nazianzus, the Paris Psalter is considered a key monument of the so-called Macedonian Renaissance in Byzantine art during the tenth century.

This and other miniatures are so Hellenistic in execution and so unlike the received notion of what medieval art in general and Byzantine art in particular should look like, that most nineteenth century authorities dated the manuscript to the time of Justinian.

The Byzantists Hugo Buchthal and Kurt Weitzmann, however, conclusively demonstrated that the book was created in the tenth century.