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A Destroyed Cycle of Wall-Paintings in a Church in Wiltshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Tancred Borenius
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Extract

The fact that the examples of Medieval Painting surviving in England are but a fraction of the pictorial production of this country during the period in question, is, of course, a commonplace among all students of the subject; and whenever you follow up a special line of investigation in this connexion you inevitably get a fresh and vivid illustration of this fact.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , October 1932 , pp. 393 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1932

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References

page 393 note 1 Many of the documents in question will be found conveniently set out in Sir Richard Colt Hoare's History of Modern Wiltshire, vol. v, Hundred of Alderbury, pp. 150 sqq.; while a more complete series is given by Pettigrew, T. J. in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association, vol. xv (1859), pp. 246 sqqCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 394 note 1 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, vol. vi, pp. 477 sq.

page 395 note 1 Compare Sicardus, Mitrale (Patr. Lat., ccxiii, 232): Annus est generalis Christus, cuius membra sunt qualuor tempora, scilicet quatuor Evangelistae. Duodecim menses sunt Apostoli …

page 395 note 2 It may be noted that in 1876 Mr. Armfield found the presence of these ‘purely secular subjects’ very difficult to account for; while the Rev. M. E. C. Walcote very properly ‘pointed out the higher significance which they might be made to connote’.

page 396 note 1 Reproduced in Mâle, L'art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France (Paris, 1910), p. 88Google Scholar, fig. 34.

page 396 note 2 See the reproduction, ibid., p. 94, fig. 39.

page 396 note 3 Drawings, by Prof. E. W. Tristram, of these subjects, reconstructed from engravings, are in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

page 396 note 4 I hope to return in another connexion to the subject of the months in medieval wall-painting; meanwhile a brief survey of some existing examples may be consulted in van Marie's, R.Iconographie de l'art profane (The Hague, 1931)Google Scholar.

page 396 note 1 W. R. Lethaby, in The Burlington Magazine, vol. xxx (April 1917), p. 139, refers to these allegories of the twelve months at Clarendon in a somewhat cryptic fashion which suggests that they were paintings. The correct facts are set out by Pettigrew, loc. cit.

page 397 note 1 So far as I can make out, a few inlaid tiles, some small metal objects, and a fifteenth-century stone matrix, all in the Salisbury Museum, are the only archaeological finds made at Clarendon now surviving.

page 398 note 1 For photographs of these, and for a great deal of help generally in preparing this paper, I am deeply indebted to my friend, Mr. Frank Stevens, O.B.E., F.S.A., Director of the Salisbury and South Wilts Museum. Concerning Richard Kemm, see The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, vol. xlv (December 1931), p. 498.

page 398 note 2 Sir R. Colt Hoare, op. cit. vol. v, Hundred of Alderbury, pp. 82–4.

page 399 note 1 The very end of the thirteenth century would in my opinion be the most probable date.

page 399 note 2 This is also the first subject of which there exists a photograph (pl. lxxxii, fig. 1).

page 400 note 1 The figures behind the Virgin which are here interpreted as ‘two saints’ must in point of fact be intended for the subject of the Visitation with the Virgin and St. Elizabeth in close embrace, much as we see them, for instance, in the thirteenth-century wall-painting at Dale, in Derbyshire, which has recently been uncovered by Prof. Tristram.

page 400 note 2 Of this subject a photograph exists (pl. lxxxii, fig. 2).

page 400 note 3 Of this subject a photograph exists (pl. lxxxiii, fig. 1).

page 400 note 4 Of this I confess I can find no convincing indication in the photograph. It looks to me the same quality all through, and very excellent quality.

page 400 note 5 From now onwards I regret to say there are no subjects available for reproduction, until we get to the corner of the south and the west wall.

page 400 note 6 This must indeed have been a very graphic expression of sorrow; for a MS. account of the discovery of these paintings preserved in Winterbourne Earls vicarage, records that one of the workmen on flaking away the whitewash, saw this figure and exclaimed ‘This woman seems to be in great trouble’.

page 400 note 7 That is what also elsewhere happened in the case of these figures of St. Christopher, so popular in the later Middle Ages: for instance at Little Hampden, Bucks, see Whaite, H. C., St. Christopher in English Mediaeval Wallpainting (London 1929), p. 24 and pl. 14Google Scholar.

page 401 note 1 Here a photograph is again available (pl. LXXXIII, fig. 2). The T-shaped cross occurs too in the same scene at Croughton.

page 401 note 2 Here, too, a photograph is available (pl. LXXXIV, fig. 1), though the preservation of the painting is unfortunately very poor.

page 401 note 3 What is seen here (pl. lxxxiv, fig. 2) is really Christ stepping out of the tomb, the traditional motif of the Resurrection compositions.

page 402 note 1 What was depicted here was undoubtedly the Noli me langere, a scene which in English medieval wall-painting can be traced as far back as the early thirteenth century, as shown by one of the paintings in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre in Winchester Cathedral.

page 402 note 2 This is, I feel, a word which strikes one as rather odd in an account of the destruction of the church.

page 402 note 3 ‘On the taking down of the parish church of Winterborne Earls … mural paintings were also discovered by Mr. Zillwood…The principal part of this church appeared to have been erected about the time of Henry VII, on the site of a prior Norman church, as portions of Norman architecture were still remaining, and it also appeared to have been enlarged by widening the nave, the north wall of which had been placed farther out in the year 1553. The first painting discovered was over the outside of the doorway leading from the tower, which was also the porch, into the nave. It was a representation of the Father, with extended arms, holding the transverse part of a Cross, on which was the Son, but on account of the plaster being damaged, the Third Person of the Trinity could not be discovered. This was decidedly on Norman work and the painting was continued and formed a part of the decoration around the Norman arch; it was evidently of a very early character, it being red in colour, and only in outline. The next was on the north wall of nave, opposite the entrance. It was a representation of St. Christopher bearing the infant Saviour across water with the usual accessories of mermaid, fishes, &c, towards a church with a bell, and doorway at west end, standing at which was a priest holding a lantern in his hand. The infant Saviour was represented as holding in his left hand the globe, or mundus, surmounted by the cross, emblematic of the future universal prevalence of the Christian religion, whilst the right has the first three fingers extended, alluding to the doctrine of the Trinity. The whole of this painting being on the wall built in 1553, probably was done in the time of Mary. It was painted in a very superior style to what is generally found in such works, the drapery flowing and in superb colours, but there was as usual, an entire absence of perspective. The next was on the same wall, but nearer the west end. It was a representation of St. Michael with a scourge, driving off a chequered pavement the beast with seven heads mentioned in the Revelations, behind the Saint was a female figure, with several smaller figures, crowned. The last was on the west splay of the window in the north chancel wall, and was only sketched, apparently in charcoal, and never finished, being only busts of two figures, male and female, with a winged dragon, possibly intended to represent our first parents with the serpent. The sketch being unfinished seems to point out the period of the decoration to be at the close of Mary's reign, and possibly her death and the accession of Elizabeth, with the change again in the religion prevented the completion of this unfinished sketch.

Drawings of these … have been taken by Mr. Zillwood of Bedwin-street, Salisbury….’

page 404 note 1 The Winterbourne Dauntsey paintings are listed in Mr. C. E. Keyser's List of Buildings having Mural Decorations (1883), ad litt.; and on the strength of his reference to them they have been noted, for instance, by Mr. Frank Kendon in his book, Mural Paintings in English Churches during the Middle Ages (1923), p. S3, 105 sq., and also by Dr. James, in Archaeologia, vol. lxxvi (1927), p. 200Google Scholar.

page 404 note 2 The question is whether it is the scene Luke vii. 37, and not rather John xii (Mary, the sister of Lazarus).

page 405 note 1 The artistic interconnexion between Clarendon and Westminster is strikingly borne witness to by a thirteenth-century tile from Clarendon in Salisbury Museum, which is identical with one from St. Stephen's Chapel now in the London Museum (A 25310).