This cathedral church of St. Saviour is full of happy surprises. Its component parts have been built in widely different periods, but it has "come together" in the most satisfactory way, and its variety is only equalled by its beauty. The first surprise, upon entrance, is the magnificent octagonal Baptistery. It is said to have been originally a Temple of Apollo, and the eight monolithic columns that support the modern cupola are of the Roman period. Two are of granite, and the rest of porphyry, but the bases and the delicately carved capitals are of white marble. The effect of the whole structure is exquisite; it can be seen from different parts of the cathedral through intervening arches, and adds enormously to the charm of the building.
The Baptistery is to the south of the aisle that was the original church. This aisle was consecrated in 1103. The present nave, with the choir slightly out of axis, and the north aisle, were begun at the end of the thirteenth century and not finished until the sixteenth. The central nave is enclosed by walls almost entirely solid, and the effect of the narrow openings cut through them, with glimpses into the side aisles, is singularly pleasing.
The long rows of carved stalls on either side of the choir are surmounted by some very fine tapestries. The design is attributed to Quentin Matsy's, and although the guide-books call them the "Cantorbéry" tapestry, they state that they came from our St. Paul's Cathedral and were bought in Paris in the year 1656 for twelve hundred crowns. But Dr. Montagu Rhodes James, Provost of King's College,[8] investigated the whole question some years ago, and read a paper before the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, from which it appears that there is no foundation for the connection with St. Paul's. Nor does he say anything about Quentin Matsy's, though the tapestries are undoubtedly Flemish, and of his date.
In the Inventory of Christchurch, Canterbury, taken in 1540, after the suppression of the monastery, is the entry "Item one faire new hanging of riche tapestrie con(taining) vj peces of the story of Christ and our Lady." Three of them were the gift of a prior, Thomas Goldston, whose device appears in the border, and three of Richard Dering, cellarer; and on the border is part of an inscription, of which the beginning is lost: celarius me fieri fecit anno domini millesimo quingentesimo undecimo; ... the cellarer had me made a.d. 1511.
So there is no doubt about it. These fine tapestries hung in the choir of Canterbury Cathedral for at least a hundred and thirty years, and then they were sold and taken to Aix, where part of them hang in the choir and part in the Archbishop's Palace. They have been a good deal cut about, and Dr. James thinks there must originally have been five scenes to a piece, which would give thirty instead of the twenty-six now to be seen.
Katharine of Aragon is said, but not by Dr. James, to be represented among the figures in the "Descent from the Cross," and there is a whole bevy of fair Englishwomen in the first panel of all, which represents "The Birth of the Virgin." They are portraits of ladies of the English court, and might be beautiful English girls of today, so lifelike and characteristic are they; some of them with the sweetest young faces of a type that is as well known now as it apparently was four hundred years ago.
I tried to get photographs of at least some of this delightful work in Aix, but without success. There are postcards of the whole series, but they are evidently from drawings and not photographs of the original. In that charming picture of the English girls the faces lose most of their character and half their beauty. Let nobody who may happen to receive one of these postcards imagine that it gives a satisfactory reproduction of the original.[9]
THE CANTERBURY TAPESTRY