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.
