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VI.—The Twelfth-Century Design Sources of the Worcester Cathedral Misericords
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2011
Extract
Misericords are a humble form of sculpture which has not attracted much attention from the erudite, either in the middle ages or today. Except when the seats of the choir stalls were tipped up, so that the misericords should spare their occupants the fatigue of standing through long services, these carvings were hidden and it does not seem to have been considered necessary that their subjects should conform to a consistent scheme of iconography. Lack of imagination, or of skill, might lead to a whole set of misericords being carved from a single decorativepattern as at North Marston (Bucks.), but where figure subjects were used it is very rare to find a consistent theme. The outstanding exception occurs at Ripple (Worcs.), where the misericords represent a complete set of ‘Labours of the Months’ presumably copied from the calendar decorations of some fine psalter. On most choir stalls we find a random selection of subjects, few of which are directly religious. Scenes from medieval romances, or subjects from the Bestiary;illustrations of sermon exempla, genre subjects, and meaningless grotesques form the major part of these designs, while a few carvings apparently express aliterary or symbolical allusion which now evades interpretation. Too little attention has been paid to the problem of how these relatively uneducated craftsmen came to have such a wide range of subjects. Did they originate their own designs, or, if they did not, what models were given to them to copy? Unfortunately misericords are not often studied by those who have the wide knowledge of other fields of medieval art which is needed to identify some of the carvers' models, for the interchange of designs between artists working in different media was an accepted practice in the middle ages. It is the purpose of this paper to show that medieval woodcarvers did copy designs from other media and the identification of their models can sometimes yield evidence which is not available from other sources.
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- Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1959
References
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