Colour Decoration of Architecture

by James Ward

The brief outlines, given in the previous chapters, of the practice of coloured decoration in Italy, France, and Germany may throw some light on the styles and methods of ornamental design and colouring as practised in our own countries, especially in medieval times.

In the pre-Norman days English churches were decorated in colour, though in a rude manner. The Venerable Bede relates that in the year 678 the Monastery of Weremouth was decorated with paintings done by French artists. Paintings and tapestry hangings were the usual adornment of the pre-Norman churches. As early as 674 Wilfrid, Bishop of York, had the walls, the sacrium arch, and capitals of the columns of his church decorated with sacred subjects, and otherwise richly coloured.

Nothing, however, except a few traces of colour on some very old edifices now exists that dates from the period anterior to Norman times, and even only a little of the colouring on mouldings, carvings, and other portions of the Norman architecture of our great cathedrals and smaller churches, but such portions of colouring as still remain are sufficient to prove that the buildings of the Norman period, in common with all pre-Reformation churches, must have been decorated and coloured from floor to ceiling.

The colours used were very few and simple, such as red, black, and yellow only in some schemes, but in others, blues and greens were introduced.

Mural paintings and sacred subjects, together with the subordinate ornamental decoration, once covered the interiors of Norman churches, but little traces are now left of such. Decorative patterns in simulation of Norman mouldings and diapers were still used in the decoration of later churches up to the end of the first quarter of the thirteenth century.

Frequent mention of colour decoration in England is made in the records, or Close Rolls, of Henry III, dating from the first decade of the thirteenth century. In these documents we find references to the painting of the king’s chambers in his palaces at Westminster, Guilford, Windsor, Winchester, and Clarendon, and mention is made of certain colours and gold, as well as of oil and varnish. References are also made to the making of stained-glass windows; and we know that miniature painting was practised in England at that period. The subject-pictures and ornamentation of the illuminated manuscripts were often copied on the walls of churches and palaces, and also in stained-glass windows of this time.

This English king had a great passion for adorning his numerous palaces and chapels with painted decoration and stained-glass. He also encouraged the art of miniature painting, and, to mention one instance of this, he ordered a large book of miniatures, which contained the illustrations and record of the exploits of his heroic uncle, King Richard I, at the siege of Antioch during the Crusade. It is also mentioned that he “ordered that the exploits should be the subjects of paintings on the wainscot of a room in the royal palace at Clarendon.” These “exploits” also formed the subjects of other paintings that were executed fourteen years later in the Tower of London, and also in the Antioch (Jews’) Chamber at Westminster. One curious and intimate connection with the painting of miniatures, as book-illustrations and mural painting, is shown by the circumstance of the king’s librarian being also the custodian of the colours, which he supplied to the decorators by order of the king. It is evident from this that colours used for the illumination of books and for wall-paintings were possibly of the same kind, and perhaps of the same value.

In some old illuminated manuscripts there are frequently representations of interiors of rooms having various decorative patterns on the painted walls and ceilings, and in some cases they are painted as “Stellari Aureo,” set with stars of gold, on a blue or green ground. In connection with this it is interesting to find that the first mention of a Star Chamber occurs in the Roll of Liveries of Henry III, in these words: “Precept to the Sheriff of Southampton that he cause the Chamber at Winchester to be painted of a green colour, and with stars of gold (and compartments or panels) in which may be painted histories from the Old and New Testaments.”

That the colour decoration of interiors was common, even before the time of Henry III, appears so from another precept issued by the king to the effect that the wainscot in the king’s chamber in the castle at Winchester is “to be painted with the same pictures as formerly.”

Some native painters were employed by Henry III, as the names of at least two are mentioned—Edward of Westminster and Master Walter—but the Italian, “William of Florence,” the monk of Westminster, seems to have been the principal painter and decorator-in-chief to the king, for, as a rule, the native artists and decorators carried out the work under his direction and supervision.