Church Monuments Society

The Journal

CHURCH MONUMENTS VOLUME XXIII small

Volume XXIII

In this volume

Andrew Sargent, A Re-Used Twelfth-Century Grave Cover from St Andrew's, Cherry Hinton, Cambridge.
The church at Cherry Hinton houses a late-twelfth-century cross slab grave cover which was converted into a semi-effigial slab in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. This paper explores the motivations behind the initial creation and later re-use of this slab, and suggest that both actions may have formed part of attempts to manipulate social status.

Sally Badham, The de la More Effigies at Northmoor (Oxfordshire) and Related Monuments at Winterbourne (Gloucestershire).
This paper examines two groups of mid-fourteenth-century monuments, comprising three military effigies and two associated ladies, at Northmoor (Oxfordshire) and Winterbourne(Gloucestershire).The armour shown on the three military figures is unusual  but virtually identical, and all five monuments are evidently from the same workshop.Yet petrologic analysis shows that the stylistic group transcends the material employed. The effigies appear to be the work of a single group of well-trained sculptors who came to the church site to work, using locally available stone rather than carving the figures at a central urban workshop before transporting them to Northmoor and Winterbourne.

Douglas Brine, The Indulgenced Memorial Tablet of Jean de Libourc (d 1470), Canon of Saint-Omer.
Canon Jean de Libourc (d. 1470) had a sculptured relief memorial tablet installed above his grave in the collegiate church of Saint-Omer (France) which featured, unusually, the image of the Mass of St Gregory and an accompanying inscription detailing a substantial indulgence that was available to its viewers. The tablet, recently attributed to the sculptor Jean Martin, can be shown to have been based on an extant contemporary Mass of St Gregory woodcut. This essay assesses the reasons for the  choice of imagery of Libourc's memorial, the significance of its original physical setting, and the effectiveness of the strategies it employs to attract the prayers of the living for the canon.

Sophie Oosterwijk, 'For No Man Mai Fro Dethes Stroke Flee': Death and Danse Macabre iconography in memorial art.
The personified figure of Death occurs frequently on tomb monuments from the fifteenth century onwards: a famous late example is Louis-François Roubiliac's dramatic monument in Westminster Abbey, which shows Lady Elizabeth Nightingale (d. 1731) being assailed by Death. The aggressive personification of Death is very different from the recumbent cadaver figures found on transi tombs from the late fourteenth century on, although both types may engage in a dialogue with the living. In some cases, the image of Death confronting and even attacking the living was directly inspired by the danse macabre, in which metaphors about dialogue, dance and violence are curiously mixed. Evidence from commemorative art thus helps us reassess the importance of this medieval theme even after the Reformation. This essay furthermore aims to show how prints may have influenced tomb design and how patrons chose not only tomb monuments to be remembered by, but also other forms of memorial.

Jean Wilson & E J Kenney, The Monument to Gerard Legh (d 1563) in St Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet Street, London.
The monument to Gerard Legh (d 1563) in St Dunstan-in-the-West is sophisticated in both its visual design and in its Latin inscription in the form of a dialogue between a Citizen of London and a Stranger. The artistic design has a bearing on Legh's life. The high quality of the monument, together with Legh's family connections and those of his friend Richard Argall, makes it possible that Argall commissioned the monument from the Cure atelier.

Dane Munro, St John's Conventual Church in Valletta, Malta: the Dynamism of a Church Floor.
The floor of St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta, Malta, is in many ways exceptional. The quality and quantity of its polychrome marble intarsia sepulchral slabs deserve our attention as much as the remarkable story of the floor's survival and revival. Its culture of memory, initiated by the Order of St John during its stay on the island, has been preserved and nurtured. The floor and its commemorative character have thus become an integral part of Malta's heritage.

Clive Easter, New Attributions and the Identification of Some Lost Monuments.
Of the surviving early-eighteenth-century monuments in Devon and Cornwall only a small number can be associated either directly or indirectly with an identifiable artist. According to Rupert Gunnis, John Weston was one of the most remarkable of the provincial statuaries working at that time; he was certainly the foremost monument maker in the region. A preliminary article, recording the known documentary evidence of Weston's life and focusing on his Last Judgement panels, was published in Church Monuments, X (1995) . The paper presented here argues that a number of other monuments should be attributed to Weston, including an important example that has received little previous attention. Due to the lack of documentary evidence, the attribution to Weston of previously monuments must be based on stylistic comparisons with his signed or otherwise attributed works. This paper also discusses a number of lost monuments that, from the descriptions or surviving fragments , can be identified as Weston products.

Paul Cockerham Review Article:
Phillip Lindley, Tomb Destruction and Scholarship – Medieval Monuments in Early Modern England. 3


Book Reviews

Christopher Starr, Medieval Mercenary, Sir John Hawkwood of Essex

Steffen Krämer, Herrschaftliche Grablege und Iokaler Heiligenkult. Architektur des Englischen Decorated Style

Margaret Scott, Medieval Dress and Fashion

Susie Nash, with contributions by Till-Holger Borchert and Jim Harris, 'No Equal in Any Land' André Beauneveu, Artist to the Courts of France and Flanders.

Mathew Davies & Andrew Prescott (eds) London and the Kingdom. Essays in Honour of Caroline M Barron.

Richard Marks (ed) Late Gothic England: Art and Display

Roberta Panzanelli with Eike Schmidt and Kenneth Lapatin (eds), The Color of Life: Polychromy in Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present Day

Peter Sherlock, Monuments and Memory in Early Modern England.

K Finch and N Tyacke, Altars Restored: the Changing Face of English Religious Worship 1547-c. 1700.

Wannabe Rickets, The English Country House Chapel. Building a Protestant Tradition.

J P G Taylor, A Fair Gate to Oblivion, A Celebration of the English Epitaph.

Mathew Craske, The Silent Rhetoric of the Body: a History of Monumental Sculpture and Commemorative Art in England 1720-1770.

Robert Dunning (ed), Somerset Churches & Chapels: Building, Repair and Restoration.

Margaret Pullan, The Monuments of the Parish Church of St Peter-at-Leeds.

Toria Forsyth-Moser (ed),  So Who Do You Think They Were? The Memorials of Ripon Cathedral.    

 

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