No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Some Newly Discovered Wall-Paintings at Madley, Herefordshire∗
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Extract
The Church of the Nativity of the Virgin at Madley (about six miles west of Hereford), widely admired for its architecture, its unusual crypt, and the rich stained glass of its east window, houses another piece of medieval art which to date has remained virtually unknown: a sizable group of paintings on the upper part of the wall above the chancel arch. So far as I am aware, the existence of such paintings at Madley has been acknowledged only in a vague and rather inaccurate notation by C. E. Keyser in 1883: ‘Over the chancel arch; Our Lord in Glory, and in Humiliation. Traces of painting elsewhere throughout the church. Probably about 1300.’ W. E. H. Clarke, writing in 1916, refers to Keyser's description and adds, ‘It is very much to be regretted that restorations have removed every trace of these mural paintings.’ The inventory of the Royal Commission reports simply, ‘Painting: Over chancel-arch, traces of large figure-subject, probably a Doom’ — a reference which seems to underlie Nikolaus Pevsner's ‘painting. Traces above the chancel arch.’ The inclusive volumes of E. W. Tristram on English medieval wall-painting, and the more recent ‘Selective Catalogue’ compiled by A. Caiger-Smith, make no mention whatever of Madley. This continuing unawareness of a substantial group of paintings not hidden under whitewash or plaster, during a time of increasing general interest in the discovery and preservation of medieval wall-painting, must be blamed partly on the condition of the paintings themselves, which are rather faint and can be fairly described as dilapidated. A more important factor, however, is the exceptional height and narrowness of the nave, particularly above the clerestory; an inevitable effect of this architectural feature is to bury the upper part of the wall over the chancel arch in permanent deep shadow, which—together with the distance from which the paintings must be viewed, and an incidental visual obstacle created by the easternmost tie-beam of the nave and its shadow — makes them normally impossible to see (Fig. 1).
- Type
- Miscellany
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Fordham University Press
References
1 A List of Buildings in Great Britain and Ireland having Mural and Other Painted Decorations… (3rd ed.; London 1883) 168.Google Scholar
2 ‘Church, Madley,’ Woolhope Transactions (1916) 111.Google Scholar
3 R(oyal) C(ommission on) H(istorical) M(onuments), An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Herefordshire (London 1931–34) 1.196. Pevsner, N., Herefordshire (Buildings of England 25; Penguin Books 1963) 248.Google Scholar
4 Tristram, , English Medieval Wall Painting: The Twelfth Century (Oxford 1944); English Medieval Wall Painting: The Thirteenth Century (Oxford 1950); English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century (London 1955). Caiger-Smith, , English Medieval Mural Paintings (Oxford 1963) 129–82.Google Scholar
5 Their condition is, however, less exceptional than might be supposed by one familiar only with Continental wall-painting. Caiger-Smith, , Mural Paintings p. 129, remarks, ‘The reader should take warning that few English medieval wall-paintings are well preserved. Almost all have been affected by the dampness of the English climate. Some were altered or repainted in the Middle Ages themselves, or were damaged by rebuilding. Many suffered from the attacks of iconoclasts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries…. Descriptions such as “well-preserved” or “clear” are only relative to a branch of painting in which it is surprising, not that the painting should be damaged, but that it survives at all…. Inevitably the condition of most of our English wall-paintings is … poorcompared with Continental examples.’ Google Scholar
6 RCHM, Inventory 1 pl. 179 (detail).Google Scholar
7 Besides these paintings above the chancel arch, an indecipherable fragment in solid red appears on the wall of the north aisle near its eastern end, partly hidden by the large wooden pew-inclosure which fills the northeast corner of this aisle.Google Scholar
8 MS Brit. Mus., Cotton Nero C. IV, fol. 24r; from Eric Millar, G., English Illuminated Manuscripts from the Xth to the XIIIth Century (Paris 1926) pl. 44 bottom (detail). See also the fourteenth-century Holkham Bible Picture Book , ed. Hassall, W. O. (London 1954) fol. 36r top left, accompanied by the text, ‘Coment Ihesus Crist se mustrat a Maudalene et a Marie Iacobe et a Marie Salomee, et yl beserent ses pees.’ Google Scholar
9 E.g., in the Psalter of St. Swithin's, repr. Millar, , op. cit. pl. 44 top.Google Scholar
10 It should be noted that although the cap or headdress worn by this figure was undoubtedly a pointed one, the exaggerated pointed end that seems visible in the photograph (M-N, bottom of 2 and top of 3) — somewhat darker than the rest, and separated from it by a distinct crack — is not a part of the painting, but the dark stone of the wall showing through a hole in the plaster surface. Similarly, the details which in the photograph are likely to appear as a menacing left eye (N, top of 5), a sack with an open mouth (L-M, bottom of 8 through 10), and a small creature with horns and tail fawning at the knee of the seated figure (H-J, 9–10), all owe their existence to defects in the plaster.Google Scholar
11 Illustration in the mid-fourteenth-century English manuscript of the Omne bonum, MS Brit. Mus., Royal 6.E.VI, fol. 15v; from Rudolf Berliner, ‘Arma Christi,’ Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 3. Folge, 6 (1956) 50 Abb. 5 (detail). For other examples of the Christ of Sorrows in a sarcophagus, see Berliner 57 Abb. 11; 58 Abb. 12; 59 Abb. 13; 77 Abb. 23; 83 Abb. 25; 85 Abb. 26; and 87 Abb. 27.Google Scholar
12 For the instruments of the Passion surrounding the Christ of Sorrows, see Berliner, ‘Arma Christi’ 50 Abb. 5 (entire); 57 Abb. 11; 58 Abb. 12; 59 Abb. 13; 61 Abb. 14; 68 Abb. 18; 77 Abb. 23; 83 Abb. 25; and 85 Abb. 26. The appearance of the motif in medieval English wall-painting is discussed by Caiger-Smith, Mural Paintings 55–8. The eucharistic chalice and the chalice used to catch the blood of Christ are found in several of Berliner's illustrations, supra. Google Scholar
13 A similar detail characterizes the Virgin in a thirteenth-century painting of the Adoration of the Magi on the south wall of the nave in the church at Pinvin (Worcs.) Google Scholar
14 Fig. 8: MS Cambridge, Pembroke Coll. 120, fol. 3r top (detail). Fig. 9: Victoria and Albert Museum, Room 62, no. A.34–1949. Note also an early fourteenth-century wall-painting in the church at Croughton (Northants.), repr. Tancred Borenius and Tristram, E. W., English Medieval Painting (Paris 1927) pl. 52. The detail is particularly common in English psalters of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.Google Scholar
15 For example, its freer use of solid colors seems characteristic of fifteenth-century painting; see Caiger-Smith, , Mural Paintings 25.Google Scholar
16 Repr. Caiger-Smith, , Mural Paintings pl. XVIII.Google Scholar