A painted canvas funerary monument in the collections of the Society of Antiquaries of London and its comparitors (original) (raw)
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Beyond Memento Mori – Cambridge Medieval Art History seminar
Carved cadaver monuments are a specific form of Transi art produced during the late Medieval, and thus Roman Catholic, era in much of Northern Europe. These recumbent Memento Mori tombs are regularly described in terms of rotting cadavers or putrefying corpses however, it was not necessarily an aspect of their initial creation that the English carved cadavers were displayed in putrefaction. As can be seen here, the carved body is not rotting, but rather resembles an emaciated person very recently deceased, laid naked inside an open burial shroud or winding cloth. The now anonymous cadaver from Feniton in Devon is in remarkably good condition; a damaged nose is not unusual given he has survived the iconoclasms of the Reformation, and the Civil War, as well as the heavy-handed Victorian restructuring of churches. Like all the English monuments in this style, he was a specific individual, a named member of the social elite, and we can be sure of this because these monuments were hugely expensive; the equivalent cost today would be in the region of a top of the range luxury sportscar! Like all of these monuments, he protects his modesty with a carefully positioned hand, and he has his mouth and eyes open (some have their eyes half open or slited open, but none appear to have closed eyes and therefore are not imaged sleeping); in many ways he looks like a fresh corpse. Keying marks for gesso are evident on the shroud cloth; these texture marks fixed a very thin plaster layer to cover the stone, and the gesso plaster was then painted, although very little evidence of this remains of this. The paint was fixed onto the gesso with organic substances like egg white, and as this decomposed, the paint would have fallen off; few extant examples retain much evidence of polychroming but a conserved example, that of John Baret, a wealthy merchant from Bury St. Edmunds, found evidence of flesh coloured tones on the body, with red and green veining. Baret commissioned his sculpture whilst he was alive; it is mentioned in his will of 1463, and he was not alone in this – several wealthy individuals commissioned during their lifetime, a life sized effigy of them naked and emaciated, lying in their open burial shroud. But why? Why would someone of social status with civic or indeed clerical, standing, as another such individual was Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, chose to have their wasted self, exposed to public gaze? I argue that a potent mix of vernacular theology, and Roman Catholic belief in purgatory, help us answer this question.
In this thesis I argue that it was during the 18th century, inspired by the cult of the individual formulated during the Renaissance but central to Enlightenment thought, that there was a general recognition that burial places and memorials erected in honour of individuals expressed and consolidated the professional identity of the deceased. The emphasis on commemoration of British worthies at this time greatly influenced the move by artists of the Royal Academy of Arts, to whom the notion of professional identity was paramount, to make their own acts of public commemoration. This study focuses on how these acts of funerary commemoration were not only intended to distinguish the deceased as an individual, but great care was also taken to endow the individual with his/her artistic identity. In many cases this emphasis on identification included the importance of burial placement; the use of motifs such as the palette and brushes; the incorporation of specific sculptural representations of one or more of the most renowned works from the hand of the dead painter; characters from the deceased’s work translated into mourning figures; and the monument itself functioning as an example of the artist’s last work. The first three chapters of this thesis deal with how the influence of Vasari and the commemoration of the Renaissance artist affected the members of the Royal Academy of Arts. In the final three chapters I deal with different aspects of the ways in which artistic identity was conveyed through the monument.
Medieval Grave Slabs Covers and Wall Paintings at Holy Trinity Church, Wensley, North Yorkshire
Research Project on Medieval Grave Slabs Covers in Northern England, 2023
This research report details the medieval grave slab covers and wall paintings at Holy Trinity Church, Wensley in North Yorkshire. One fragment of a grave slab cover is built into the interior north wall of the north aisle an intact slab stands against the west end wall of the north aisle near the north door and a large fragment of one is situated resting against the outside south wall of the south aisle. The medieval wall paintings depicted two separate scenes ‘The Three Living and The Three Dead’ and ‘A Legend in the Life of Saint Eloi’ The report also includes a brief history of the church which is noted for its magnificent artwork in wood carvings and brass memorial plaques.