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Some Presumably Datable Fragments of an English Alabaster Retable, and some Assembled Notes on English Alabaster Carvings in Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

W. L. Hildburgh
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Extract

In view of the very number—possibly more than three thousand—of English alabaster devotional (as distinct from those made as parts of monuments) carvings which have survived, it is somewhat astonishing how extraordinarily small a proportion of them have hitherto been datable otherwise than on intrinsic grounds. We have, indeed, many references to such carvings in dated or datable documents, but in extremely few cases have we been able to identify the particular objects with which those references are concerned. So far as I know, the only ones which have as yet been connected definitely with a dated document are the ones in the reredos, depicting events in the story of St. James, preserved intact in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Almost invariably an English alabaster carving is datable only within somewhat wide limits, the criteria most usually applied being those laid down ’provisionally’ (but now commonly accepted as practically correct) by Prof. Prior nearly thirty years ago, and in accordance with the inherent characters of the sculpture and the applied coloration. Any discovery of data relating to a particular alabaster carving is, consequently, of considerable moment to us, not merely in relation with the object with which the data are immediately concerned, but much more importantly as giving us means for dating other similar carvings more accurately than within Prior's provisional ‘Periods’ (even though modified by the general terms ‘early’ and ‘late’) of about forty years each. In the case of the Santiago retable there can be no doubt at all as to the direct connexion between it and the existing document relating to it; in the case of the present fragments there is, unfortunately, in the only records I have found associated with them, an element of uncertainty, although there appears to be a very strong presumption that the medieval record to which I shall refer relates to the altar whose retable those fragments adorned.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 24 , Issue 1-2 , April 1944 , pp. 27 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1944

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References

page 27 note 1 Hildburgh, Cf., ‘A Datable English Alabaster Altar-piece at Santiago de Compostela’, in Antiq. Journ. vi (1926), 304CrossRefGoogle Scholarseqq.

page 27 note 2 Cf. Prior, E. S., ‘The Sculpture of Alabaster Tables’, in Illustrated Catalogue of the Exhibition of English Medieval Alabaster Work (Society of Antiquaries), Oxford, 1913, 23Google Scholarseqq.

page 27 note 3 Cf. Castro, J. Villa-amil y, ‘La Catedral de Mondoñedo’, in the monthly periodical El Arte en España, iii, Madrid (1864) 1865Google Scholar, 403 seqq. It need hardly be pointed out that the writer did not recognize the fragments as English; it was not until several decades later that the true origin of carvings of the kind became known.

page 28 note 1 Approximately 40 × 27 cm., indicating that these panels were of what can be termed the ‘standard’ size of the industrially produced alabaster tables of the period.

page 28 note 2 These include, on p. 307 seq., details of the surviving applied colouring.

page 28 note 3 Cf. Count Biver, Paul, ‘Some Examples of English Alabasters in France’, in Archaeol. Journ. lxvii (1910), pl. viiGoogle Scholar; Ill. Cat. cit., pl. vii, fig. 16.

page 28 note 4 Cf. Maclagan, , ‘An English Alabaster Altarpiece in the Victoria and Albert Museum’, in The Burlington Magazine, xxxvi (1920), 53Google Scholarseqq. and pl. 1; A Picture Book of English Alabaster Carvings, London (Victoria and Albert Museum), 1925, pl. 4Google Scholar.

page 29 note 1 Reproduced, as are also pl. x b and c, from photographic reproductions (after negatives by R. Balsa de la Vega) accompanying M. Amor Meilan's section on ‘Lugo’ in Geografia general del Reino de Galicia, Barcelona, N.D., pl. facing p. 448. I am indebted to the Hispanic Society of America, and to Mrs. Beatrice Gilman Proske, of the staff of its museum, for notice of these reproductions.

page 29 note 2 In Antiq. Journ. v, pl. xii, I reproduced an alabaster table in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg, which I took to represent the ‘Annunciation to the Shepherds’, and I remarked that that table was the only one of the subject in English alabaster of which I knew. I am now of the opinion that it represents, rather, the announcement to Joachim—an opinion supported by the presence in that same museum of a table of the ‘Dedication of Mary’ arid of one of her ‘Purification’ (cf. ibid., pl. xi).

page 29 note 3 As in the ‘Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew’; cf. M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament, Oxford, 1924, 73.

page 29 note 4 Cf. J. Villa-amil y Castro, Catálogo de los objetos de Galicia, in the Exposición Histórico-Europea, Madrid, 1892, 24. I regret that I have no notices of this interesting table beyond those given above, and do not know where it is now.

page 29 note 5 Cf. Biver, op. cit., pl. viii.

page 29 note 6 Cf. Hildburgh, in Proc. Soc. Ant., 2 S., xxix, 76.

page 30 note 1 40 × 28 cm., and thus almost exactly the same size as the present one.

page 30 note 2 Cf. Hildburgh, in Antiq. Journ. viii (1928), pl. xvi and 58 seqq.

page 30 note 3 Villa-amil, apparently mistakenly, gives this as seventeen.

page 30 note 4 A number of representations in this form survive.

page 30 note 5 Shown in Villa-amil’s sketch on his second plate.

page 30 note 6 Cf. Florez, H., España sagrada, xviii, Madrid, 1789, 205Google Scholar.

page 31 note 1 Cf. Ford, Richard, (Murray's) Handbook for Travellers in Spain, 3rd ed., London, 1855, 626Google Scholar. Bell, A. F. G., in Spanish Galicia, London, 1922, 59Google Scholar, quotes Villa-amil as saying (in La Catedral de Mondoñedo, Madrid, 1865, 55Google Scholar) that, according to tradition, the image of Nuestra Senora la Grande was brought from England, during the schism of Henry VIII, by a pious Catholic named Juan d’Utton [? John Dutton], who because of the heresies in England of the time came to live in the town of Vivero, where he built half the monastery of Santo Domingo and did many things. He engaged in trade, and in 1558 undertook to provide oil for Mondoñedo. It is, in this connexion, interesting to recall the Christ of Lezo, not far from San Sebastian, brought to Spain in that same period by a Spanish vessel, but which according to legend was thrown into the sea by Henry VIII and carried by the waves to the coast of Spain; cf. Proc. Soc. Ant., 2 S., xxxii, 128.

page 31 note 2 Cf. Ford, op. cit. 625 seq.

page 31 note 3 Reproduced by courtesy of The Hispanic Society of America, to whom belong the negatives, together with two others (less satisfactory for our purposes) of the retable.

page 32 note 1 Cf. Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursions, xv (1907), 12Google Scholar, with photographic reproduction on pl. facing ii.

page 32 note 2 Cf. Ill. Cat. cit., pl. vii, fig. 14; Biver, op. cit., pl. xviii; J. A. Brutails, Album d'objets d'art existant dans les Églises de la Gironde, Bordeaux, 1907, pl. 25. This retable has seven scenic-panels, instead of the Avilés five.

page 32 note 3 Cf. Biver, op. cit., pls. v, vi; Nelson, in Trans. Hist. Soc. Lancs. and Ckes., 1920, pl. facing 55.

page 32 note 4 Cf. Antiq. Journ. iv (1924), pl. li and 374 seq.; cf. Archaeol. Journ. lxxxviii (1931), 238 seq. and pl. ix, for another Apostle presumably of the same set.

page 32 note 5 Cf. Ill. Cat. cit., pl. vii, fig. 15.

page 33 note 1 It may be observed that the Daroca ‘Adoration of the Kings’, noted below, is analogously arranged, but has its kings in the main portion of the table, and the heads of their three horses in the place of the kings themselves here.

page 33 note 2 Reproduced from E. Carré Aldao’s ‘Provincia de la Coruña’, in Geografia general del Reino de Galicia, ii, 996.

page 33 note 3 On this, seemingly exclusively English, subject, cf. The ‘Trinity’ with Souls, in my ‘Iconographical Peculiarities in English Medieval Alabaster Carvings’, in Folk-Lore, xliv (1933), 50 seqq. and figs., 8, 9.

page 33 note 4 Cf. Antiq. Journ. xii (1932), 410.

page 33 note 5 Cf. Hildburgh, in Proc. Sod. Ant., 2 S., xxviii (1916), 63 seq.; the table is now on loan in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

page 33 note 6 Cf. id. in ibid, xxxii (1920), 124 seq.

page 34 note 1 Cf. Maclagan, in Burlington Mag. xxxvi, 62 and pl. 11.

page 34 note 2 Cf. Hildburgh, in Proc. Soc. Ant., 2 S., xxxii, 128 seq.

page 34 note 3 Cf. id., in Antiq. Journ. x, 35 seq. and pl. vi.

page 34 note 4 Cf. Hildburgh, in Pro. Soc. Ant., 2 S., xxix (1917), 74 seqq.

page 34 note 5 Id. 84 seqq.

page 34 note 6 Cf. Select Cases in Chancery A.D. 1364 to 1471 (edited by W. Paley Baildon), London (Publications of the Selden Society, x), 1896, 45 seq.

page 34 note 7 Cf. Antiq. Journ. iii, 24 and pl. vi.

page 34 note 8 Cf. Nelson, in Archaeol. Journ. lxxvii (1920), 215Google Scholarseqq. and pls. in, iv, v; R. P. Bedford, in Burlington Mag. xlii (1923), 130 seqq. with pl.; Picture Book cit., pls. 6, 7.

page 34 note 9 Cf. Hildburgh, in Proc. Soc. Ant., 2 S., xxxii (1920), 121Google Scholarseq.

page 34 note 10 Cf. id. in Antiq. Journ. vi, 307.

page 35 note 1 Id. in Proc. Soc. Ant., 2 S., xxxi, 59 seqq., and pls. facing 59, 60.

page 35 note 2 Ibid. 61 and pl. facing 60.

page 35 note 3 Cf. Boletín Soc. Española Excursiones, xxxvi (1928Google Scholar), pl. facing 240. I regret that I have not seen these very noteworthy objects; I have, however, from the rather small photographic reproductions given, an impression that by far the greater part, if not indeed the whole, of them is of English workmanship.

page 35 note 4 Cf. Hildburgh, in Archaeol. Journ. lxxxviii, 231 seqq., with pls. in, iv, v; id. in Antiq. Journ. vi, 307; Nelson, in Archaeol. Journ. lxxxiv, 114 seq.

page 35 note 5 A slip of my pen, on p. 232 loc. cit., although so obvious as to be harmless, deserves correction here; I spoke, in connexion with the ‘Carrying of the Cross’, of ‘Joseph of Arimathea’ where I should have put ‘Simon the Cyrenian’.

page 35 note 6 Cf. Salvator, Louis, Die Balearen, iv, Leipzig, 1882, 113Google Scholarseqq.

page 36 note 1 Cf. Proc. Soc. Ant., 2 S., xxix, 87 seqq., with fig. 10.

page 36 note 2 Id. 90 seqq., with fig. 11.

page 36 note 3 Ibid, xxxi, 58 seq., with fig. 3.

page 36 note 4 Id. 57 seq., with fig. I.

page 36 note 5 Id. 58, with fig. 2; Archaeologia, lxxiv, pl. xlvi.

page 36 note 6 Cf. Antiq. Journ. viii, 54 and pl. xiv; ibid, xvii, pl. xc.

page 36 note 7 Id. 62 seq. and pl. xvii.

page 36 note 8 Unpublished.

page 36 note 9 Most of the examples recorded as belonging to Mr. Lionel Harris, of ‘The Spanish Art Gallery’, were bought by Mr. Harris in Spain; and many of those recorded as in the collection of the late Mr. Grosvenor Thomas came, not rarely after passing through Mr. Harris’s hands, from Spain.

page 36 note 10 Cf. Nelson, , in Archaeol. Journ. lxxvii (1920), 217Google Scholar, with pl. vi.

page 36 note 11 Id. 221, with pl. xii.

page 36 note 12 Id. 218 seq., with pl. viii.

page 36 note 13 Ibid, lxxxii, 32 and pl. viii.

page 36 note 14 Ibid, lxxxiii, 43 and pl. viii.

page 36 note 15 Cf. Sentenach, N., ‘Estatuas alabastrinas del Siglo xiv’, in Boletín Soc. Española Excursions, xi (1903), 10Google Scholarseqq., with pl. facing 11.

page 36 note 16 Cf. p. 33, n. 3 supra.

page 36 note 17 Cf. Burlington Mag. liii (1928), pl. on 263 with note on 265; Hildburgh, in FolkLore, xliv, 50, 54, and fig. 8.

page 37 note 1 Cf. B. Oppenheim, Originalbildwerke … aus der Sammlung Benoit Oppenheim Berlin, Supp., Leipzig, 1911, pl. 79; Nelson, in Archaeol. Journ. lxxxiii, 44 seq., with pl. ix; A. S. Tavender, in Parnassus, 1931, 28 seq.

page 37 note 2 Loc. cit.