The Rector’s Zombie Bride: The Monument To Madelina Lance (D.1839)
Month: | September 2017 |
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Type: | Stone carving |
Era: | 19th Century |
Visit this monument
Church of The Blessed Virgin Mary
Buckland St Mary
Chard
Somerset
TA20 3SL
Month: | September 2017 |
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Type: | Stone carving |
Era: | 19th Century |
Church of The Blessed Virgin Mary
Buckland St Mary
Chard
Somerset
TA20 3SL
In 1839 Madelina, the wife of John Edwin Lance, Rector of Buckland St Mary died of smallpox on March 26, seven days after giving birth to a son, Reginald Strathallan, who himself died three days later. They were buried together on Easter Day (31 March). Twenty-
Perhaps because of its isolated position Buckland St Mary, designed by Benjamin Ferrey, is one of the underappreciated gems of the Victorian religious revival. Ferrey, the friend and fellow-
The source of the monument to Madelina Lance is that by Johann August Nahl to Maria Magdalena Langhans, wife of Pastor George Langhans, who died in childbirth in 1751 aged 28, at Hindelbank, Switzerland. This monument was the subject of a Romantic cult, visited by notable figures such as the writers Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Kaspar Lavater, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the artist Alexander Trippel, and the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. In addition terracotta models of the monument were made for sale as souvenirs one example of which is in the British Museum . Its image was also widely disseminated in the form of prints. It became an essential item for British (and indeed American) visitors touring Europe.
It was not necessary for a member of the Porcher/Lance family to have visited Switzerland to know about the Langhans monument. Even so, they must have been attracted by the parallels between the situation of John Edwin Lance and George Langhans. There is the coincidence of the dead women’s names, their deaths associated with childbirth, and their husbands’ avocations. There may even be a remote similarity in the sound of the names Lance and Langhans. In any case, although the peak of the fame of the Langhans monument had passed by the time of the erection of the Lance monument (although not at the time of Madelina Lance’s death) the Lance monument’s source might be expected to be recognised by the educated visitor.
The sculptor of the Lance monument was James Forsyth, a major figure in nineteenth-century ecclesiastical sculpture, who also made the pulpit and reredos. The reredos represents the Entombment, so that it forms a coherent programme with the earlier Resurrection monument and window. As with Ferrey, the Lance and Porcher families had gone to one of the leading artists of the day to fulfil their commission.
The Buckland St Mary monument, therefore, is not a bizarre provincial piece by a non-metropolitan artist with a design that now appeals only to devotees of steam-punk and gothick horror, but a serious work of art which places Buckland St Mary at the heart of the tradition of European Romanticism.
The connections between Romanticism and the Nineteenth-
Lance and his architect were both attached to the High-