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The Wall-Painting at Idsworth, Hampshire, Reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

John Edwards
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Summary

The chapel of St. Hubert, Idsworth, Hants, has a fourteenth-century wall-painting, on the north wall of the chancel, which is in two tiers, the upper representing a hunting scene on the left and, on the right, the first of a series of episodes from the life of a saint, which latter are concluded in the lower tier. Though this painting has received critical attention since 1864, there has not been agreement on its interpretation. The present article adduces fresh evidence which supports the opinion of the late Professor F. Wormald, expressed in the Antiquaries Journal for 1945, that the left-hand side of the upper tier represents a scene from the legend of the hairy anchorite, followed by episodes from the last days of St. John the Baptist, and suggests what may be the literary origin, foreseen, but not identified, by Wormald, of the connection between these two subjects.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 79 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1983

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References

Notes

1 There seems to be no consensus on the question of whether it is properly called a church or a chapel. The use of the latter follows Professor Wormald, F., ‘A wall-painting at Idsworth, Hants, and a liturgical graffito’, Antiq. J. XXV (1945), 43–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; it is also the description used in the current Official Guide, for which latter information I am indebted to Mrs. M. Jean Barker, a former Churchwarden of St. Hubert's.

2 Lloyd, D. in Sir Pevsner, N. and Lloyd, D., Buildings of England: Hampshire (Harmondsworth, 1967), p. 307.Google Scholar

3 For a consideration of this Morality and a catalogue of the wall-paintings of it then extant, see Williams, E. Carleton, ‘Mural paintings of the Three Living and the Three Dead in England’, J.B.A.A. n.s., VII (1942), 31–40.Google Scholar

4 Tristram, E. W., English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century (London, 1955), pl. 42.Google Scholar

5 See the remarks of Rouse, E. Clive, ‘Wall-paintings in the Church of St. Pega, Peakirk’, Arch. J. CX (1953), 135–49.Google Scholar at 139 and 144.

6 Tristram, op. cit., p. 89, when describing the wall-painting at Idsworth was also able to cite the one in the church at Kingston Lisle, now in Oxon., as another example of Herod's Feast, but unfortunately this is now indecipherable.

7 Michel, P.-H., La fresque romane (Paris, 1961), p. 167 and pl. 56.Google Scholar

8 Arch. J. XXI (1864), 181–5, at 184.Google Scholar

9 Keyser, C. E., ‘Mural and decorative paintings … at Canterbury Cathedral’, Arch. J. XXXV (1878), 275–88, at 281.Google Scholar

10 V.C.H., , Hampshire, III (1908), p. 109.Google Scholar

11 By Bernheimer, R., Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 192, n. 38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 J. Warburg Inst. I (1937–1938), 183.Google Scholar

13 F. Wormald, op. cit. (n. 1).

14 Ibid., p. 44, n. 2.

15 Ibid., P 45.

16 Tristram, op. cit. (n. 4), pp. 87–8, 184–5.

17 Ibid., pls. 42–6.

18 Johnston, P. M., Surrey Arch. Coll. XXIV (1911), 70–80, at 76.Google Scholar

19 Tristram, op. cit. (n. 4), p. 87.

20 Ibid., p. 88.

21 Loc. cit. (n. 20).

22 Loc. cit. (n. 20).

23 Ibid., p. 89.

24 Loc. cit. (n. 20).

25 Loc. cit. (n. 23).

26 Loc. cit. (n. 23).

27 Caiger-Smith, A., English Medieval Mural Paintings (Oxford, 1963), pp. 20, 88, and 144.Google Scholar A detail of the hunting scene appears as pl. xia.

28 Réau, L., Iconographie de l'art chritien, III. 2 (Paris, 1958), pp. 1007–8.Google Scholar

29 d'Ancona, M. L., ‘An unknown drawing from the workshop of Bernardo Daddi’, Gazette des Beaux Arts, ser. 6, XLII (Paris, 1953), 281–90Google Scholar, at 282 and reproductions.

30 D. Lloyd in op. cit. (n. 2), p. 307.

31 Cunliffe, B., ‘Chalton, Hants: the evolution of a landscape’, Antiq. J. LIII (1973), 173–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 187.

32 Attwater, D., Penguin Dictionary of Saints (1970), p. 124Google Scholar, for particulars of St. Eustace.

33 From the statistical analysis of Keyser, C. E.'s List of Buildings having Mural Decorations (London, 1883)Google Scholar, which is set out in Kendon, F., Mural Paintings in English Churches during the Middle Ages (London, 1923), app. III.Google Scholar

34 E. Carleton Williams, op. cit. (n. 3), p. 31.

35 Edwards, J., ‘A medieval wall-painting at Hailes’, Trans. Bristol & Glos. Arch. Soc. XCIX (1981), 167–9.Google Scholar

36 Coulton, G. G., Art and the Reformation (Oxford, 1928), p. 383, n. 1.Google Scholar

37 Tristram, op. cit. (n. 4), p. 89.

38 Cunliffe, op. cit. (n. 31), p. 187.

39 Ibid.

40 See the descriptions of the architectural drawings of 1912 (84) 1–5 by the late H. S. Goodhart-Rendel in the Drawings Collection Catalogue of the British Architectural Library.

41 Tristram, op. cit. (n. 4), p. 88, n. 5.

42 Ibid., p. 89.

43 Aylmer, G. E. and Cant, R., A History of York Minster (Oxford, 1977), p. 330.Google Scholar

44 It is reproduced as pl. 19 in Ferguson, G., Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

45 D. Attwater, op. cit. (n. 32), p. 199.

46 L. Réau, op. cit. (n. 28), p. 721.

47 Schubring, P., ‘Die Chrysostomus-Legende’, Zeitschrift für Bildenden Kunst, n.s., XXIV (Leipzig, 1913), 109–12, at III, reproduced as fig. 4.Google Scholar

48 Miss Rickert, M., Painting in Britain: the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 134Google Scholar; see also note 55 to chapter 6, p. 241, and pl. 136.

49 Sir Warner, G. F. and Gilson, J. P., Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Royal Collections, I (1921), p. 334.Google Scholar

50 This information has been kindly given me by Miss J. M. Backhouse, Assistant Keeper, the Department of Manuscripts, the British Library, to whom I would like to express my gratitude.

51 Warner and Gilson, op. cit., p. 334.

52 F. Wormald, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 47.

53 Again I would like to express my indebtedness to Miss J. M. Backhouse, Assistant Keeper, the Department of Manuscripts, the British Library, for this information. She tells me that ‘Folio 136 is the last leaf of a gathering and “molestias” is the catchword to enable the binder to identify the next gathering when eventually placing them in order’.

54 Warner and Gilson, op. cit. (n. 49), p. 334.

55 Procacci, U., ‘The technique of mural paintings and their detachment’, Catalogue of the Frescoes from Florence Exhibition (Hayward Gallery, London, 1969), p. 22.Google Scholar

56 Zischka, G. A., Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexikon (Stuttgart, 1961), p. 587Google Scholar; not the Trecento!

57 Schubring, op. cit. (n. 47).

58 d'Ancona, A., La Leggenda di Sant'Albano e la Storia di San Giovanni Boccadora seconda due antiche lezioni in ottava rima (Bologna, 1865).Google Scholar

59 Ibid., introduction, p. 55.

60 Schubring, op. cit. (n. 47), p. 110.

61 I am grateful for the information about L. S. Westall's copy and for the different positions of the creature's eyes to Mrs. M. Jean Barker, a former Churchwarden of St. Hubert's.

62 Schubring, op. cit. (n. 47), p. III; d'Ancona, op. cit. (n. 58), p. 96. The following translation is suggested: ‘O good people who have heard this, commend yourselves to the blessed St. John, who keeps us in peace and good health …’

63 D. Lloyd in op. cit. (n. 2), p. 389.

64 Pächt, O., ‘A Giottesque episode in English medieval art’, J. Warburg Inst. VI (1943), 51–70, at 51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 F. Wormald, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 45.