MEDIAEVAL PAINTINGS AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
DURLNG the last two years a systematic effort has been made to clean the painted tombs and sculptures in the Abbey Church, with the result that some discoveriei have been made and much colour is more plainly visible than at any recent time. The great canopied tombs on the north side of the high altar were originally entirely gilt and coloured, as also were the sedilia on the south side. On the sedilia portions of two figures, large and beautiful, which formed a group of the Annunciation, had been painted over in the seventeenth century, and having been thus " pro- tected " the colours are exceptionally fresh and fair. Unhappily, the upper parts of these remarkable figures were scraped off the panels, but indications remain which are sufficient to make their gestures plain. These figures, with
-others of the Confessor and two more Kings which remain, were painted about 1307, very probably. by Master Walter, the King's painter (who decorated the Coronation chair), with the assistance of his son Thomas. The splendid tombs just mentioned were also, it is thought, painted by the same masters. On the tomb of Edward of Lancaster some small figures of knights holding flags were sufficiently cleaned by Mr. Tristram to allow of his making a " restored " record of them. On the same tomb part of the original inscription was also revealed : ICI GIST EMON FIZ . . .
Opposite this tomb the original coloured decoration of a small doorway entering one of the northern chapels has been made known for the first time. A full account of the minute decoration of the tombs and the sedilia would not be followed without many illustrations. I therefore turn to the more general scheme of the paintings in the Chapter House.
These paintings consist of a series of five compositions, in as many arched spaces, on the east side of the octagonal building. These portray Christ coming to the final Judg- ment—the Doom. On four other sides of the octagon, under similar wall arcades, a longer series of subjects was painted from the Book of Revelation—the Apocalypse.
The latter are different and—so far as it is allowable to say so of ancient art—of inferior quality. They have conse- quently been thought to be of different dates—the eastern set of mid-fourteenth century work and the Apocalypse of the fifteenth century. Now, a record exists that Brother John of Northampton caused certain paintings to be executed at Westminster, including the Apocalypse in the Chapter House and the Doom in front of it. Dean Stanley thought that John of Northampton was a monk of the time of Edward IV., but Bishop Pearce in his recently published Monks of Westminster shows that he was a brother in the time of Richard II. The Doom pictures show resemblances to the celebrated diptych at Wilton painted for Richard II., and although it was impossible to think the Doom could be so late as the time of Edward IV., it is easy to accept that of Richard II. As to the phrase "front of the Chapter House," the east end in mediaeval records is frequently called the front.
The paintings in the Chapter House, it may no longer be doubted, are remnants of the Doom and the Apocalypse painted for John of Northampton in the time of Richard II.
The difference of style comes from a difference of quality. The five compartments "in front" were originally works of high quality showing the Italian influences which were saturating Western art at this time. The Apocalypse pictures arc ordinary shopwork of the period, repeating the compositions from some illuminated book.
When the Doom paintings were revealed, by the removal of modern fittings in 1801, they were in such comparatively good condition that it is now sadly evident that they themselves are doomed to disappear almost entirely at no distant date.
The chief cause is damp. On entering the Chapter House the sound condition of a few panels of the Apocalypse series to the left gives the impression that they were a beginning of work which was never completed ; then we find a few precious fragments of the Doom, and again on the right we may notice traces of much darkened paintings. The more uninjured subjects, on the left, are against an internal wall, those which have disappeared and others that are fast going are on external walls. Probably the removal of intrusive domestic buildings round about exposed the walls to more rain and the slow striking through of the destroying damp. The few heads which are all that remain of the fine Doom panels should be recorded as soon as possible, for in a few years they, too, will have disappeared. Some sketches of these panels were taken by John Carter when they were first found, and a water-colour drawing of them is kept near the pictures—a good and suggestive precedent— and other sketches are in the Gardner Collection.
In the centre was Christ seated on the sphere of the heavens with the earth as His footstool. Angels on either hand bear the instruments of the Passion, while others support a blue curtain behind them. This last is an Italian motive, and some of the faces show an Italian character. That Italian painting had already become famous in England is shown by several written records concerning Lombardy pictures. Each of the panels on either hand of the centre is occupied by a large seraph with six wings. On the feathers of the wings of the one on Christ's right were written words : Simplicitas, Humilitas, &c. There arc prototypes for this in English MSS. of an earlier date, and, comparing these with the sketches in the Gardner Collection and with Eastlake's description of the pictures, I have been able to gather the whole of the words. In the panels farthest to the right and left were groups of adoring angels and traces of two figures kneeling in front, doubtless the Virgin Mary and St. John. The angels of the upper row had uplifted wings, making a beautiful cresting along the top. This is so like the design of the Wilton diptych that I feel convinced that the wall painting was influenced by this precious little picture, which there is reason to think may have been painted for the Church in memory of the coronation of Richard II. The King is painted in coronation robes and as having presented the banner of England to the Virgin, to whom he is introduced by St. John the Baptist. Now, it is recorded that in the fifteenth year of his reign the King endowed a mass to be celebrated at the altar of St. John the Baptist in the Abbey on the anniversary of his coronation.
The Doom wall painting is one of a special group of works which must be considered together, the others being the Wilton diptych and the great portrait of the King—which are both, I believe, French works—and also the tester of the King's tomb.
The Chapter House is a great octagonal structure. If we number the side in which is the entrance as 1, the opposite side with the Doom is 5; 2 and 3 and 7 and 8 were occupied by the Apocalypse,_ while 4 and 6 seem to have had groups of persons gazing towards Christ the Judge. These may, I think, be portraits of the inmates of the monastery. The paintings are in blank arches, of which there are five on each side. In the arcatles devoted to the Apocalypse there are four subjects in each space, as well as a bottom band on which animals were painted on a red ground. These animals were in pairs facing a thee ; above the three pairs which remain, on side 1, the names " Reynder, Ro ; Wild Ass, Tam Ass ; Dromedary, Kameyl " appear. In 1873 one more, "Lyon," remained. About thirty years ago, when I made some drawings, the Reindeer was much more perfect ; it had large, plate-like horns, held low, protecting its flanks. Birds are perched on the trees which separate the beasts, and according to Mr. Waller, who described the paintings in 1873, there were formerly fishes on the face of the upper of the two stone seats beneath the arcade. These creatures, I suppose, come in as part of the order of this present dispensation which is to be terminated at the Last Day. Above, in the heads of the arches, is a series of demi-figures of angels playing musical instruments. In the first principal panel we see St. John landing on Patmos from a ship. Further on the Seven Churches are represented, with an " Angel " in the doorway of each. Then comes a fine composition of Christ enthroned between the golden candlesticks, with a sword in His mouth and the Elders casting down their crowns. The last of the subjects which remain are three of the Four Riders of the Vision. Beneath each subject is a long extract from the Book of Revelation, written on paper which is attached to the wall.
To the south, in the arcades of sides 7 and 8, large remnants of the series remain. These paintings have darkened much more than those on the north, and careful cleaning would certainly practically recover several of them. Here are the Lamb on the Throne, the Great Dragon and the Fall of Babylon. This last is a delightful design of falling mediaeval towers and spires smitten by great stones, and still so clear that I have been able to draw it easily. Altogether in the arcades of the four " bays " there were eighty subjects, and they correspond so closely with the pictures in books of the Apocalypse that it is evident they were copied from such a book.
Dr. M. R. James has shown that certain sculptures of the Life of the Confessor on the back of the altar-screen in the Abbey Church follow a painted MS. at Cambridge which once belonged to Westminster. With this same MS. is bound up an Apocalypse, which appears from the printed descriptions of the subjects to agree so closely with the Chapter House paintings that it seems that it might be the actual source from which they were adapted. The paintings themselves look as if they might be later copies of earlier designs in a book. The figures and costumes are par- ticularly interesting as illustrating the types which were developed in Chaucer's time ; indeed, there is so much likeness between them and the paintings in the Ellesmere Chaucer that it seems to me quite possible that the MS. might be contemporary with the poet instead of later, as is usually supposed. It is probably London shopwork.
The arches of the arcade which contains the Doom series show considerable traces of gilding and colour, and the paintings themselves had much gilding. When the whole circuit of the paintings was complete and fresh, and, more- over, when all the rest of the stonework of the walls and vaults had the customary " picking-out " in colour, the interior of this building must indeed have been most
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