Artefacts from Plantagenet England

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 32

Artefacts from Plantagenet England

Masterpieces of one of the richest periods of art in England — the two Gothic centuries — will go on display in London later this year. Along with objects sent from outside England there will be emotive pieces such as the Black Prince’s armour from Canterbury Cathedral and two parts of an illuminated manuscript which will come together for the first time in at least a century.

JONATHAN ALEXANDER,

:, reader in the history of art,

University of Manchester, reports:

The “Age of Chivalry” exhibition to be held at the Royal Academy of Arts in Burlington House, Piccadilly, from November 6 to March 6, 1988, will gather together nearly 700 precious medieval objects. They were made in England under five Plantagenet kings, from Henry HI to Richard 11, between 1200 and 1400, and include stained glass, embroideries, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, metalwork, and ivories. The last time such art was shown in a loan exhibition was at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1930 but that was a much less comprehensive show. A sumptuous catalogue, gallery guides, a school’s pack, lectures, and related events will all help to make this major exhibition of the year as widely accessible as possible.

The Church was the main patron in the Middle Ages and has been the main preserver of Gothic art in England, so many of the loans will come from cathedrals. They will include a 4.5 metre window and the armour worn by the Black Prince — son of Edward 111 — from Canterbury Cathedral, as well as the famous thirteenth century map of Hereford Cathedral. Most of the other objects will come from public and private

collections — the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the British Library, and the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges and university libraries. In addition, nearly every county will be represented, from local museums and small parish churches.

Many people will discover treasures kept near where they live but hitherto unknown or inaccessible to them. Examples will include the exquisite head of an unknown queen from St Mary Magdalene Church, Cobham, in Kent, which is famous for its monumental brasses, and the Moot Horn from Faversham in the same county, which was used to give warnings of fire in the thirteenth century.

Medieval patrons and artists valued, above all, precious f-’

materials and fine craftsmanship. An object like the drinking cup from King’s Lynn, in eastern England, with its coloured enamels, is an extraordinary survival of this kind.

A variety of media and techniques will be represented, and the objects will vary enormously in size.. Some will be huge, like the panels of stained glass from Canterbury Cathedral and York Minster. Others will be minute and intricate, like the delightful rings and brooches. One of the latter contains a warning: "I am a brooch to guard the breast that no rascal may put his hand thereon.”

their visits to Canterbury and the Shrine of St Thomas Becket, as recounted by Chaucer. And there will be objects- of humour and fun like the misericords, including the riddle from

Worcester Cathedral: “A woman must come to the King clothed and unclothed, riding and not riding, bearing a gift which is no gift.” She is shown covered in a net, riding on a goat with one foot on the ground, and carrying a rabbit which will escape when presented. Nearly 50 objects will come from continental European collections with an especially important group from Norway

There will also be humbler These will include the St Michael objects for more ordinary people from Mosvik, now preserved in in the shape of the lead badges Trondheim, carved in oak and that pilgrims bought at the with its original paintwork — shrines of saints, above all on one of the most exquisite of all 4

medieval sculptures. Such objects must once have been numerous in England, but all were destroyed by the Puritans during a later period of history. The sculpture is so closely related in style to English works, such as the group of the Annunciation carved for Westminster Abbey Chapter House which will also come to the exhibition, that it must either be by an English artist or by one under strong English influence. Among other especially important European loans Will be an object unfamiliar even to most specialist scholars. This is the fabulous gold and jewelled crown taken, it * seems, by 'Blanche, daughter of Henry IV, to Munich, Germany, for her wedding in 1402 to Ludwig, Count Palatine of the Rhine. From the remote monastery of St Paul in Lavantal, Austria, will come part of a psalter made for Ramsey Abbey in the English Fens in the early fourteenth century. The other part of this illuminated manuscript is preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, and will also come to the exhibition, so that the two parts will be joined toether for the first time for 100 years. Some 15 crucial loans from the United J

States will include other precious manuscripts, from the Pierpont Morgan library, the New York Public Library, and the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, as well as ivories and textiles from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The objects scheduled for the exhibition have survived the destructions by the centuries by various miracles, and their extreme fragility in many cases has meant that the organisers have had to pay special attention to problems of conservation. Grants from City of London companies have paid for a programme of conservation for pieces of stained glass and carvings in stone and wood. The beautiful carved panels from the small church of Mattersey in Nottinghamshire will be cleaned in this way. The need for preservation and conservation is considerable. Several of Britain’s greatest cathedrals, including Salisbury, York, and Ely, have large appeals to keep them standing, and new threats like acid rain are extremely worrying for the survival of this crucial part of the British artistic heritage. Copyright — London Press Service.