Medieval English Art

in The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse and Kathryn A. Smith, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 21 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 121-76. 

NB: the publisher of my first book, 'Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England', is given incorrectly in the bibliography for this essay, and was changed without my authorization in the final stages of publication. The originating publisher of my book was The British Library (London).

This short article deals with the alabaster reredos of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Rose Chapel of St. Seurin of Bordeaux. The reredos displays twelve English medieval alabaster tablets with scenes of the Life of the Virgin; it is datable to ca. 1440.

Grigoire Arbore Popescu (Foreword), Michael Kitson (Editor), M.A. Michael  (Author),  Bignamini (Author), David Blayney Brown (Author), Susan Foister (Author), Justine Hopkins (Author),Christopher New ll (Author), Sergio Perosa (Author),  Kim Sloan (Author).

Originalità e caratteristiche della produzione pittorica inglese dagli albori del medioevo agli sviluppi più recenti.

L’arte in Gran Bretagna, a differenza di quanto accade nella maggior parte dei paesi europei, non si presta molto alla abituale suddivisione per categorie storiche. La sua insularità ha avuto indubbiamente grande importanza nel determinare varianti e tradizioni locali del gusto occidentale, non tanto in forma di isolamento e di chiusura quanto piuttosto di scelta fra le diverse tendenze europee. Queste pervennero nell’isola a varie riprese fin dalla preistoria, con l’occupazione romana, con l’evangelizzazione, con le invasioni germaniche e la conquista normanna, e poi attraverso le complesse vicende politiche e religiose del medioevo e del Rinascimento, con le correnti culturali dell’illuminismo, del classicismo e del XIX secolo. Esse determinarono a loro volta elaborazioni locali che ebbero una notevole influenza sull’arte europea, giungendo talvolta a espressioni d’avanguardia rispetto al continente anche sul piano delle poetiche e del gusto figurativo.

As with many important medieval pilgrimage sites, St Albans Abbey preserves very little of the rich material holdings which were documented at the site in the Middle Ages.  The Gesta Abbatum, the main historical record for the abbey, does not provide a systematic inventory or catalogue, but does mention, with varying degrees of detail, a number of works of art made for the church in the twelfth century, including several textiles which have not yet been the subject of any extended scholarly examination.  In this paper I offer some preliminary comments on a textile held by the abbey which depicted scenes from the Passion of St Alban.  Although textiles of a similar nature from this period and region are scarce, we can gain some idea as to the appearance of this textile from comparative material.  Although any reconstruction must remain speculative, a better understanding of the appearance of this work offers points of departure for examining how the work, as one part of an immersive visual and material experience, might have interacted with other elements of the ritual space of the abbey church in the twelfth century and later, and how the work might have been understood by medieval viewers, whether pilgrims, patrons, or members of the monastic community.