Windsor
All the larger stallwork of the fifteenth century was, as we have seen, designed in two stories, rising into spirelets and pinnacles; at Windsor the double story, the spirelet and the pinnacle are all alike lacking. It is true that the original canopies were designed quite as much for the Knights of the Garter as for the Windsor Canons, and in the case of the former the design had to be accommodated to provide supports for the knights' helmets, mantles and swords; nevertheless this might have been accomplished without utterly breaking away from current design. The Windsor design, so far as English work goes, has no ancestry; its origin no doubt is to be found in the Netherlands. The Windsor stalls have been much tampered with. As Hollar's engraving in Ashmole's Institution of the Order of the Garter (1672) shews, over the westernmost bay on either side of the choir the canopies contained imagery and had a horizontal cresting; and all the other canopies consisted alternately of towers and spirelets; the knights being seated under the towers and the canons under the spirelets; but since the enlargement of the Order in 1786 all the spirelets have been converted into towers ([71]). All these towers are surmounted by wooden busts, of which the earliest go back to the time of Edward IV.; on the bust were placed the knight's helmet, crest and mantlings, which hid the busts from view; lower down, in front, hung his sword; banners were not added till a later period. At first the real sword and helm were put up; later, they were theatrical properties.
Bishop Langton's Chapel
In Winchester cathedral is stallwork of rare beauty in the Lady Chapel, which was built in the time of Bishop Courtenay, 1486-1492. In some of its details it resembles the Windsor stalls, which were completed in 1483; it is therefore feasible that some of the Windsor carvers went on to Winchester ([73]). South of the Lady Chapel is the chantry chapel of Bishop Langton, 1493-1500, where also the screen and coved panelling are of great excellence ([72]); there are no stalls.
| Winchester Cathedral | Westminster Abbey |
Henry the Seventh's chapel at Westminster was built partly as a Lady Chapel, partly to be the mausoleum of Henry VII. and his Queen, and of Henry VI.[[35]] Here the canopies with tower-like form and single story and with the absence of pinnacle are plainly reminiscent of those of Windsor, and as plainly distinct from current English design, as seen at Manchester in 1508 and Beverley Minster in 1520; the Westminster and Manchester canopies were being made together; but those of Westminster have no connection with the grand Northern series of consecutive designs ([131]). Besides Windsor influence there may be direct influence from the Netherlands; for some of the misericords are evidently from the design of a painter or engraver, the subjects being too crowded to be properly carved in wood in so limited a space. Mr J. Langton Barnard says,[[36]] "While looking over some engravings on copper of Albert Durer, I came across one which strikingly resembled the third misericord in the upper row on the north side; the resemblance was extremely close, especially in the arrangement and folds of the woman's dress; this is stated by Bartsch in his Catalogue (vii. 103 and 93) to be one of his earliest plates. Another plate of Albert Durer closely resembles the corresponding misericord in the lower row on the south side, as regards the position of the limbs and the folds of the drapery; while the seventh misericord of the lower row on the south side almost exactly resembles a plate by Israel van Meckenern, of two monkeys and three young ones." These stalls formerly occupied only the three western bays of the chapel; another bay was filled with stalls when the Order of the Bath was revived by King George the First; the canopy-fronts for an additional bay on each side being got by sawing off canopy-backs and putting them up as fronts. The tabernacle work is of the richest and most diversified character, varying in every canopy ([73]).