went with the artistic tide in representing the recently-born infant as a
strapping boy of four or five; yet his common-sense telling him that was a
violation of fact he put the other figure in with the strapped infant to
show what--in his own private opinion--the child would really be like at
the time.
We might have supposed it to be St. John, but he was older and not younger
than the Divine Child. In the Scandinavian mythology, Vali, the New Year,
is represented as a child in swaddling clothes.
[Illustration: ADORATION OF THE MAGI, WORCHESTER.]
The Scriptural subjects in carved work may be compared with the wall
paintings which in a few instances have survived the reforming zeal of
bygone white-washing churchwardens. The comparison is infinitely to the
advantage of the carvings. These paintings are in distemper and were the
humble inartistic precursors of noble frescoes in the continental fanes,
but which had in England no development. To what extent there was merit in
the mural decoration of the English cathedrals cannot well be stated.
Such examples, as in a few churches are left to us, are simply
curiosities. Though changing with the styles they are more crude than the
sculptures, and the modern eye in search of the grotesque, finds here
compositions infinitely more excruciatingly imbecile than in any other
department of art-work of pretension.
[Illustration: BAPTISMAL SCENE, GUILDFORD.]
At the same time when they are considered in conjunction with the most
perfect of the paintings of their period they are by no means so low in
the scale of merit as at the first thought might be supposed.
Outside the present purpose of looking at them as unintentional grotesques
they are very valuable specimens of the English art of painting of dates
which have, except in illuminations, no other examples.
Those of St. Mary's, Guildford, are very quaint. The first selected from
the series is a representation of Christ attending the ministration of St.
John the Baptist. St. John has apparently taken down to the river bank a
classic font, in which is seated a convert. The Baptist himself, wearing a
Phrygian cap (probably Saxon), is turning away from the figures of Christ
and the man in the font, and is apparently addressing a company which does
not appear in the picture. Just as the font was put in to make the idea of
baptism easily understood, so, we may suppose, the curious buttons on
thongs, or whatever they are, were shewn attached to St. John's wrist, to
indicate that he is speaking of the "shoe-latchets." The waters and bank
of the Jordan are indicated in a few lines.
[Illustration: CASTING OUT OF DEVILS, GUILDFORD.]
The other selection is still more bizarre. It evidently portrays Christ
casting out devils. The chief point of interest in this painting is the
original conception of the devils. Anything more vicious, degraded, and
abhorrent, it would be difficult to produce in so few lines. Roughly
speaking, they are a compound of the hawk, the hog, and the monkey; this
curious illustration is an excellent pendant to the marks made upon early
Satanic depictions on a previous page. The faces are Saxon, except in the
case of the man with the sword, who is a distinct attempt at a Roman. The
artist had evidently in his mind one who was set in authority.
The churches of the Midlands are rich in wall-paintings.
A fine example is in North Stoke Church, Oxfordshire, which has two
Scriptural subjects, a series of angelic figures, and several other
figures, etc., only fragmentally visible. They were all found accidentally
under thick coats of whitewash. It may be doubted whether they were ever
finished. The two Biblical subjects are "Christ betrayed in the Garden,"
and "Christ before Pilate." Christ is a small apparently blind-folded
figure, of which only the head and one shoulder remains. Pilot is the
Saxon lord, posing as the seated figure of legal authority, poising a
hiltless sword in his right hand. The figure addressing Pilate is
apparently a Roman (Saxon) official; his hand is very large, but there is
a simple force about his drawing. The fourth figure in a mitre is
doubtless meant for a Jewish priest, and he has a nasty, clamorous look.
Pilate, unfortunately, has no pupils to his eyes, but his general
appearance is as though he was expostulating with the priest.
There is a carol, printed in 1820, which has a woodcut of the subject not
less rude and not less of an anachronism than this: but what is curious,
as illustrating the main theory of the present volume--the tenacity with
which form is adhered to in unconscious art--is that the disposition of
the figures is exactly the same in both pictures. Where the Saxon lord is
seated, imagine a bearded magistrate, at a sort of Georgian
quarter-sessions bench, with panelled front. For the simple Saxon, with
vandyked shirt, suppose a Roman half-soldier, half-village-policeman. Then
comes the figure of Christ, with the head much lower than those of the
others because he is nearer. Lastly, there is an incomplete figure behind.
In this case the perfect correspondence may be mere coincidence; it is
difficult to explain otherwise. The design, however, is the same, only the
Anglo-Norman filled in his detail from his observation of a manorial
court, the Moorfield engraver from his knowledge of Bow Street
police-court.
To conclude, although these paintings are ludicrous in the extreme, the
artists, who had no easy task, were absolutely serious, and their works,
divested of the comic aspect conferred by haste and manipulative
incompetence, are marked by bold impressiveness.
The initial to this chapter is from one of a series of similar ornaments
on the parapet of the south side of the nave of Beverley Minster; it
illustrates the toilsome nature of the later portion of Adam's life.
Masks and Faces.
[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, THE CHOIR, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]
The merriest, oddest, most ill-assorted company in the world meet together
in the masks and faces of Gothic ornament. Space could always be found for
a head, and skill to execute it. Yet though the variety is immense, the
faces of Gothic art will be found to classify themselves very definitely.
[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, DORCHESTER, OXON.]
Perhaps the most prevalent type is the classic mask with leaves issuing
from the mouth. This may be an idea of the mask which every player in the
ancient drama wore, displayed as an ornament with laurel, bay, oak, ivy,
or what not, inserted in the mouth, because it was pierced for speaking
through, and the only aperture in which the decorative branches could be
inserted. Or seeds might germinate in sculptured masks and so have
suggested the idea. Masks were hung in vineyards, etc.
[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, ST. MARY'S MINSTER, ISLE OF THANET.]
[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]
A mask above the internal tower-doorway in the Lady Chapel of Dorchester
Abbey has a close resemblance to the classic mask in the protruding lips,
which, for the conveying of the voice for the great distance necessary in
the arrangement of the ancient theatres, were often shaped like a shallow
speaking-trumpet. The leaves appear to be the vine, and so the head,
perhaps, that of Bacchus. Between the eyebrows will be noticed an angular
projection. This is probably explained by a mask in a misericorde in St.
Mary's Minster, in which some object, perhaps the nasal of a helmet, comes
down the middle of the forehead. The leaves in this case appear to be oak,
which is, indeed, the prevailing tree used for the purpose.
[Illustration: INDIAN MASK, ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]
[Illustration: LATE ITALIAN FOLIATE MASK, WESTMINSTER.]
Occasionally a mask with leaves has the tongue protruding.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable masks in Gothic is on another
misericorde in the same town, but in St. Mary's Church; in which the
features, the head-dress, the treatment of the ears, are all Indian, while
the leaves are those of the palm. This is, perhaps, unique as an instance
of Gothic work so nearly purely Indian in its form.
[Illustration: RIPON, _late Fifteenth Century_.]
Sometimes the leaves are much elaborated as in one of the late
misericordes of Westminster Abbey; in a few cases the original simplicity
is quite lost, and we have, as at Ripon, the mask idea run mad, inverted,
and the leaves become a graceful composition of foliage, flower, and
fruit.
A rosette from the tomb of Bishop de La Wich, Chichester, has four animal
faces in an excellent design.
[Illustration: ROSETTE ON TOMB OF BISHOP DE LA WICH, CHICHESTER.]
Often masks are of the simple description known as the Notch-head; these
are of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They are generally found
in exposed situations at some elevation, as among the series of corbels
(_corbula_ a small basket) or brackets called the corbel-table,
supporting a stone course or cornice. The likeness to the human face
caused by the shadows of the T varies in different examples. That below,
by curving back at the base, suggests the idea of a mouth. Occasionally,
as at Finedon, Northamptonshire, the notch-head has its likeness to a face
increased by the addition of ears.
[Illustration: MASK, BUCKLE, OR NOTCH HEAD, CULHAM, YORKSHIRE.]
Norman masks are interesting, as they explain some odd appearances in
later work. In many churches are faces scored with lines across the
cheeks, regardless of the ordinary lines of expression, in a manner
closely resembling the tattoo incisions of the New Zealand warrior. This
appearance, however, is simply the too faithful copying of crude Norman
masks, in which the lines are meant to be the semi-circles round eyes and
mouth. Moreover, the Norman heads are most often the heads of animals
grinning to shew the teeth, although their general effect is that of
grotesque human heads. Iffley west doorway furnishes the best example.
Here we have the well-known "beak head" ornament. The semicircle and upper
portion of the jambs have single heads, not two of which are exactly
alike, though all closely resemble each other. They are heads of the eagle
or gryphon order, with a forehead ornament very Assyrian in character. The
heads of the jambs are compound, being the head of a grinning beast,
probably a lion, from the mouth of which emerges a gryphon head of small
size. These are sometimes called "Cat-heads," and the gryphon head is
sometimes considered (and perhaps occasionally shewn as such) a tongue. A
fine doorway of beak-heads is at St. Peter's-in-the-East, Oxford, which
church was probably executed by the workmen who were responsible for
Iffley.
[Illustration: BEAK HEADS, IFFLEY.]
It is probable that the symbolism of this is the swallowing up of night by
day or _vice versa_. The outer arch of the Iffley doorway consists of
zodiacal signs, and at the south doorway are other designs elsewhere
mentioned in this volume, far removed from Christian intent.
[Illustration: NORMAN MASK, ROCHESTER.]
The grotesqueness of Norman work is almost entirely unconscious. The
workers were full of Byzantine ideas, and the severe and awful was their
object rather than the comic. They frequently attempted pretty detail in
their symbolic designs, but in all the forms which have come from their
chisels it is easy to see how incomplete an embodiment they gave to their
conceptions, or rather to the conceptions of their traditional school.
Norman work, beyond the Gothic, irrespective of the architectural
peculiarities, has traces of its eastern origin in the classic connection
of its designs. Adel Church, near Leeds, is peculiar in having co-mingled
with its eastern designs more than ordinarily tangible references to
ancient Keltic worship, but nearly all Norman ideographic detail concerns
itself with old-world myths.
[Illustration: GORGONIC MASK, EWELME.]
An excellent conception, well carried out, is in a mask which is one of a
series of late carvings alternating with the gargoyles of Ewelme. In this,
instead of leaves issuing from the mouth of the mask, there are two
dragons. If those with leaves are deities, this surely must be one of the
Furies. It is on the north side of the nave; on the exterior of the
aisle, at the same side, other sculptures form a kind of irregular
corbel-table, and special attention may be drawn to them as affording an
indication of the derivation of such ornaments from the "antefixes" or
decorated tiles occupying a nearly corresponding position in classic
architecture.
[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, EWELME.]
One of those on the aisle offers a further explanation of the mark before
mentioned as being on the foreheads of some masks. In this case the
prominences of the eyebrows branch off into foliage. This appears also to
be the intention in a capital carving in Lincoln Chapter House.
Roslyn Chapel has some very realistic heads, notably of apes or gorillas
near the south doorway, of which one is drawn (opposite).
[Illustration: FOLIATE MASK, LINCOLN.]
Norman work has frequently some very grotesque heads in corbel tables and
tower corners, to the odd appearance of which the decay by weather has no
doubt much contributed. Two examples from Sutton Courtney, Oxfordshire,
illustrate this weather-worn whimsicality.
[Illustration: GORILLA, ROSLYN CHAPEL.]
Then comes a crowd of faces which have no particular significance, being
simply the outcome of the unrestrainable fun of the carver. Some are
merely oddities, while others are full of life-like character.
[Illustration: GARGOYLE, SUTTON COURTNEY.]
[Illustration: WEATHER-WORN NORMAN, SUTTON COURTNEY, BERKSHIRE.]
[Illustration: HUMOUR, YORK.]
[Illustration: MASK WITH SAUSAGE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON.]
[Illustration: A JEALOUS EYE, YORK.]
The knight with the twisted beard, from Swine, may be a portrait, and the
Gargantuan-faced dominus from St. Mary's Minster certainly is. An old
barbarian head from a croche or elbow-rest at Bakewell is rude and worn,
but yet bold and fine.
[Illustration: A BEARD WITH A TWIST, SWINE, YORKSHIRE.]
[Illustration: A QUIZZICAL VISAGE, BAKEWELL.]
[Illustration: GRIMACE MAKER, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]
[Illustration: FOOL'S HEADS, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]
Some of these are better than the joculators and mimes' faces in which the
artist seriously set himself a humorous task, as in the three heads
(page 130) from Beverley Minster, though the latter are in some respects
more grotesque.
[Illustration: A PORTRAIT, ST. MARY'S MINSTER. ISLE OF THANET.]
[Illustration: A ROUGH CHARACTER, BAKEWELL.]
Another curious instance of a grimace and posture maker, assisting his
countenance's contortions by the use of his fingers, is at Dorchester
Abbey. In this the artist has not been master of the facial anatomy, and
shows a double pair of lips, one pair in repose, the other pulled back at
the corners.
[Illustration: GRIMACE MAKER, DORCHESTER, OXON.]
Often a grotesque face will be found added to a beautiful design of
foliage, either as the conventional mask, as in the design in Lincoln
Chapter House, or a realistic head, as the following grim, dour visage
between graceful curves on a misericord at King's College, Cambridge.
[Illustration: GRACE AND THE GRACELESS, KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.]
The Domestic and Popular.
[Illustration: THE WEAKER VESSEL, SHERBORNE.]
Domestic and popular incidents are plentiful among the carvings, of which
they form, indeed, a distinct class; and they afford a considerable amount
of material with which might be built up, in a truly Hogarthian and
exaggerated spirit, an elaborate account of mediaeval manners in general.
In the majority of cases the incidents have a familiar, if not an
endearing suggestiveness.
[Illustration: DOMESTIC DISCIPLINE, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]
The records of mankind are not wanting in stormy incidents in which the
gentle female spirit has chafed under some presumed foolishness or
wickedness of the head of the house, and at length breaking bounds,
inflicted on him personal reminders that patience endureth but for a
season. An example of this is given above, which shews the possibility of
such a thing as far back as 1520, the date of the Beverley Minster
misericordes. While the lady is devoting her attention to the flagellation
of her unfortunate and perhaps entirely blameless spouse, a dog avails
himself of the opportunity to rifle the caldron.
[Illustration: AN UNKIND FARE, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]
The picture in the initial, taken from a carving in the choir of Sherborne
Minster, shews another domestic incident in which the lady administers
castigation. Though in itself no more than a vulgar satire, it is probable
that this carving was copied from some representation of St. Lucy, who is
sometimes shewn with a staff in her hand, and behind her the devil
prostrate.
It is not easy to say what is the meaning of another carving in Beverley
Minster, or whether it has any connection with that just noted. The
probability is that it has not. This may be a shrewish wife being wheeled
in the tumbril to the waterside, there to undergo for the better ruling of
her tongue, a punishment the authority for which was custom older than
law. But I am inclined to think that another reading will be nearer the
truth. The vehicle is not the tumbril but a wheelbarrow, and the man
propelling it is younger than the lady, who is pulling his hair. I imagine
the man is apprentice or husband, and is not very cheerfully trundling his
companion home. A similar, but more definite misericorde is in Ripon
Cathedral.
In this barrow, the old woman, wearing a cap with hat on the top, as yet
occasionally seen in country places, is seated in a mistress-like way. She
is not committing any violence, but apparently is offering the man (call
him the bridegroom) his choice of either a bag of money with dutiful
obedience, or a huge cudgel, which she wields with muscular power, with
dereliction. The gem of the carving is the man's face. He smiles a quiet,
amused, satirical smile, as of one who would say, "'Tis no harm to humour
these foolish old bodies, and must be done, I trow."
[Illustration: THE CHARIOT, RIPON.]
But the object called a bag of money is as likely to be a bottle, and the
whole subject may be something quite different. She may be going to the
doctor, or offering the man a drink; or it may be Noah wheeling his
wife into the Ark, which, it was one of the jokes in a Mystery play to
suppose she was very unwilling to enter.
[Illustration: PILGRIMAGE IN COMFORT, CANTERBURY.]
[Illustration: MARTINMAS. CHRISTMAS. HOLY TRINITY, HULL.]
The block from the capital of a column in the crypt of Canterbury
Cathedral, tells us little of its history. It is given as an example of a
cheerful grace and ease not common in early work.
The hunting of the boar is a frequent subject of the Gothic carver, being
generally considered the sport of September, though Sir Edward Coke says
the season for the boar was from Christmas to Candlemas. It is uncommon to
find the boar's head shewn treated as in the accompanying block, struck
off, and with the lemon in his mouth, ready for the table. These
quatrefoils are the only two with a special design upon them, out of
twelve on the font of Holy Trinity Church, Hull, the others having
rosettes. There is no rule in this, but there are other examples in which
small portions of fonts are picked out for significant decoration, and
possibly on the side originally intended to be turned towards the door of
the church, or the altar.
[Illustration: HUNTSMAN AND DEER, YORK.]
Hunting scenes frequently occur. A boss in York Minster shews a huntsman
"breaking" a deer as it hangs from a tree.
The wild sweetness of one stringed and one wind instrument--not uncommonly
met as harp and piccolo near London "saloon bars"--was a usual duet of
the middle ages. In Stoeffler's _Calendarum Romanorum Magnum_ (of 1518) in
a series of woodcuts illustrating the months, and which are otherwise
reasonable, he gives one of these duets performed in a field as a proper
occupation of the month of April with the following highly appropriate
distich--
"Aprilis patule nucis sub umbra
post convivia dormio libenter."
[Illustration: A CURIOUS DUET, CHICHESTER.]
In this carving, however, the musicians appear to be within doors and to
be giving a set duet. To the interest of the ear they add a curious
spectacle for the eye, for they are seated in chairs which have no
fore-legs, and their balance is kept by the flageoletist taking hold of
the harp as the players sit facing, so that while leaning back they form a
counter-poise to each other. The chairs are a curious study in mediaeval
furniture.
It is not unlikely that the sculptor in the case of the annexed block had
in his mind something similar to the saying--
"When a man's single he lives at his ease."
[Illustration: BACHELOR QUARTERS, WORCESTER.]
A man come in from, we may presume, frost and snow, has taken off his
boots, and warms his feet as, seated on his fald-stool by the fire, he
stirs the pot with lively anticipation of the meal preparing inside. He is
probably a shepherd or swine-herd; on one side is seated his dog, at the
other are hung two fat gammons of bacon.
[Illustration]
Shepherds and shepherding furnish frequent subjects to the carver.
In a Coventry Corpus Christi play of 1534 one of the three shepherds
presents his gloves to the infant Saviour in these words--
"Have here my myttens, to pytt en thi hondis,
Other treysure have I none to present thee with."
This carving has been called the Good Shepherd. If the artist really meant
Christ by this shepherd with a hood over his head and hat over that, with
great gloves and shoes, with a round beardless face, with his arms round
the necks of two sheep, holding their feet in his hands, it is the finest
piece of religious burlesque extant. But it is not to be supposed that the
idea even occurred to the sculptor.
The Feast of Fools was a kind of religious farce, a "mystery" run riot.
Cedranus, a Byzantine historian, who wrote in the eleventh century,
records that it was introduced into the Greek Church A.D. 990, by
Theophylact, patriarch of Constantinople. We can partly understand that
the popular craving for the wild liberties of the Saturnalia might be met,
and perhaps modified, by a brief removal of the solemn constraint of the
Christian priest-rule. But licentiousness in church worship was no new
thing, and, long before the time of Theophylact, the Church of the West,
and probably the Greek Church also, had been rendered scandalous by the
laxity with which the church services were conducted. At the Council of
Orleans, in A.D. 533, it was found necessary to rule that no person in a
church shall sing, drink, or do anything unbecoming; at another in
Chalons, in A.D. 650, women were forbidden to sing indecent songs in
church. There is in fact every evidence, including the sculptures of our
subject, that religion was not, popularly, a thing solemn in itself.
Cedranus mentions the "diabolic dances" among the enormities practised at
the Feast of Fools, which was generally held about Christmas, though not
confined to that festival.
In the twelfth century, the abuse increased; songs of the most indecent
and offensive character were sung in the midst of the mock services;
puddings were eaten, and dice rattled on the altar, and old shoes burnt as
incense.
[Illustration: DANCING FOOLS, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]