Dear listmembers,

I come somewhat late to the discussion of polychromy of Cathedrals 
and the general use of polychromy, but hope that the following 
general observations on the English material may be of interest.

In  Romanesque Cathedrals detailed figural polychromy seems to have 
been largely confined to liturgically important features, for 
example, important chapels, such as the Galilee at Durham and the 
Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre at Winchester or apses and vaults 
associated with altars, as in the Chapel of St Gabriel at Canterbury 
or the south nave aisle vaults at Ely and Norwich.  It seems likely 
that some of the cathedrals relied on the contrast between stone and 
motar for general polychromatic effect.  

The thirteenth century is characterised by more extensive painted 
schemes, but these are often decorative rather than figural.  The 
scheme of c.1220 which covered both in the interior and exterior at 
Salisbury has already been mentioned.  At Norwich there are extensive 
remains of a decorative scheme in the east end which probably post-dates a fire 
of about 1272 (I'm writing from memory).  These schemes make use of 
motifs such as fictive masonry, foliage and marbling.  From the 
second half of the thirteenth century heraldic motifs become common, 
both as decorative elements, as at Norwich, or to indicate 
benefactors, as in the ghosts of painting round the choir at 
Peterborough.  The earliest heraldic scheme surviving in the form of 
'ghosts' at Worcester may date back as early as c.1220-30.  There are 
also many figurative schemes associated with chapels and altars, for example, 
the scene of the martyrdom of St Edmund in one of the north transept 
chapels at Ely and the earlier images in the series of paintings 
associated with nave altars which serve to illustrate the extension 
of lay patronage in the nave at St Alban's.  Tombs which become 
common from this century were also originally highly polchromed in 
many cases, fine examples survive at Exeter.  The recess tomb, particularly
 popular in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries was often enhanced
 by a painted scene in the recess.  The painted decoration of such 
tombs is recorded at Exeter and Hereford, while some examples survive 
at Lichfield.

In the fourteenth century the general concentration of polychromy on 
tombs, fictive altars, such as those in the south transept at 
Winchester (now lost) and in chapels continued.  A trend to more 
extensive polychromy may be evidenced by schemes such as the standing 
votive figures of saints of c.1320 in the nave at St Alban's 
Cathedral.  The painted vault of roughly contemporary date in the 
Ante-Reliquary Chapel at Norwich is also famous.

The extensive paintings of the apocalypse in the Chapter House at 
Westminster Abbey are perhaps the most striking manifestation of a 
tradition of didactic decoration of Chapter Houses which seems to go 
back to the twelfth century (Avril Henry will know more of this than 
I do).  These paintings probably date to the last years of the 
fourteenth century.  The decoration of the Chapels of Our Lady 
Undercroft at Canterbury and Our Lady at Pew in Westminster Abbey 
give some indication of the elaborate schemes of decoration which 
surrounded cult images.  Shrines of saints were also polychromed in 
many cases by this has rarely survived to any great extent.

Striking fifteenth-century schemes survive in the corona at 
Canterbury, where the single image of the legend of ?St Eustace is 
the survivor of a series of images of saints and at St Alban's where 
an image of Doubting Thomas of shortly pre 1428 survives in the 
north transept.  This painting and other items which accompanied it 
are described in a very interesting contemporary document from the 
Abbey.  The grisaille paintings of the miracles of the Virgin in the 
Lady Chapel at Winchester are probably c.1510-20 in date and are 
heavily dependent on the earlier series of this subject at Eton 
College c.1479-87.  There are also examples of richly painted chantry 
chapels, such as those of Islip in Westminster Abbey, whose 
decoration is depicted on his mortuary roll and the elaborate scheme 
in the lost chapel of Margaret Hungerford ?(d.1476) in Salisbury.

Most paintings were covered with whitewash in the sixteenth century 
in response to royal injunctions, of which I remember those of Edward 
to be the first to demand the obliteration of all imagery, as 
opposed to that which Reformers considered was being 'abused'.  
Further destuction took place during the Commonwealth, but it hard to 
know how many of the images destroyed by 'professional iconoclasts' 
such as Dowsing were actually murals.  There are examples of 
deliberate defacing of murals on the Erpingham Reredos in Norwich 
(which was uncovered into the reign of Elizabeth I) and in the Lady 
Chapel at Winchester, but whitewash generally provided the easiest 
option.  In some instances unobjectionable murals may have remained.  
The painting of King Offa in St Alban's appears to be late 
fourteenth-century in origin, but reworked after the Reformation.  
Images of monarchs were generally protected in the Henrican and 
Edwardian period, but were naturally a target during the 
Commonwealth.

After the Reformation, painting in English churches was generally 
limited to texts and the dark borders painted to pick out memorials.  
Images such as Time and Death, the Twelve Tribes of Israel and King David,
 found in post-Reformation parish church schemes, do not survive in Cathedrals
 in great numbers, but there is what appears to be the remains of 
figures of Aaron and Moses in the Elder Lady Chapel at Bristol.

With regard to sculpture, many tombs and statues retain traces of 
polychromy and even Saxon sculptures sometimes contain blank areas 
where the detail was painted rather than sculpted.  Polychromed 
statues survive in a damaged state at Pickworth in Lincolnshire and 
Kersey in Suffolk, among many other examples.  English albasters 
often retain their rich polychromy.  While our approach to statues is 
undoubtedly effected by our post-Renaissance impression that statues 
should not be heavily painted, the medieval polychromy of statues was a subtle 
art and post-medieval repainting in garish enamel colours rarely 
gives an impression of the exquisite brillance of the original 
polychromy.  The Conservation of Wall Painting Department at the 
Courtauld has undertaken several polychromy surveys of English 
Cathedrals and I should be glad to provide references to anyone who 
wants to follow up my general overview.

To end on a lighter note, I do not know on which church 'A month in 
the Country' was based, if any.  The Last Judgement or Doom painting 
was probably the most enduring subject in English wall painting, the 
earliest example being the recently-discovered late eleventh-century 
painting at Houghton-on-the-Hill in Norfolk.  Several hundred 
examples are known or recorded and the corpus was the subject of an 
M.Phil by Jane Asbhy at York (1980).  The example at St Thomas, Salisbury is 
particularly fine, if rather extensively repainted.  There is an 
extensive article on its imagery in the Wiltshire Archaeological and 
Natural History Magazine for, as I remember, 1942.

Miriam Gill ([log in to unmask]) (Conservation of Wall Paintings at the 
Courtauld Institute of Art and Slide technician at Leicester)

9 Westminster Road
Leicester
LE2 2EH
  
    


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