Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
There’s a furiously carved stone in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral and you can see why – a man sitting on his head, legs apart, holding a fish and bowl in outstretched hands. Other figures perched atop thin stone pillars include a creature with a snake’s tail fighting a dog-like beast, a beast eating a siren, and a sculpture (which is closed) of a horned devil. All this evil within the holiest temple in England.
But ancient British art is full of wonder, mystery and humor. It is also so abundant that it is taken for granted. But now, after nearly 1,000 years, it is about to have a moment. This week, the rush will go on sale for £33 tickets to spend 40 minutes in the making of British art. The Bayeux Tapestry, a 70 meter long tapestry depicting the Norman conquest of England in 1066, was woven by Kentish women for Bishop Odo of Bayeux in the 1070s.
Having survived for centuries as the treasure of Bayeux in Normandy, his debt to British Museum in London is interesting but strange – because, although the argument is clear, it’s not like we don’t have some ancient art and architecture. Perhaps Bayeuxmania should make us dust off our Romanesque and gothic treasures and appreciate them more. And if you queue up to see the Tapestry, you may be surprised to find that many of these other wonders involve little money and difficulty.
Medieval art came to Britain with the Normans. I don’t mean to disparage Anglo-Saxon England but as the Bayeux Tapestry shows, with its depictions of William (later known as the Conqueror) and his men riding horses or building a palace, continental Europe was a little more advanced. By the year 1066, it had settled into a fraternity – a nation of lords, soldiers and commoners bound by oaths and united to Christianity. This was an artistic period in France and throughout Europe, with the construction of large Romanesque abbeys and churches. Soon after the conquest, the style reached Britain, led by Lanfranc, an Italian priest who was made Archbishop of Canterbury by King William I.
It costs nothing to look out for and the middle ages produced some of Britain’s finest. Glastonbury Tor boggles the mind with its stunning tower, built on top of a deserted hill. Is it the place where King Arthur died? The question remains though that the tower belongs to the church of the 14th century, its interesting place that resembles a medieval eye in beautiful paintings.
Conwy Castle on the eponymous river is in a wonderful position on top of a huge cliff. Yet you can’t tell its 13th-century architect, James of St George, didn’t have an eye for beauty. The towers and turrets of this gothic castle dance intricately against the mountains and sea. With the original roofs, writings and writings, it must have looked like something out of a fairy tale.
I got my first impressions as a kid watching them. As an adult, I also felt the joy of childhood the first time I stood by the River Wear and looked up at the two great towers of Durham Cathedral perfectly placed – as if this were the house of God – on a high hill to command a landscape of trees, a dark river and bridges. These are golden vistas – or so JMW Turner thought, and who could argue with him? A brilliant photographer has captured some of the best pictures of these and other ancient sites in Britain.
Medieval Britain had a better landscape because they were more in touch with nature than we are. In the 1400s Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral, flowers and bursts of crops such as grapes and nuts are hung in sloping rows that make the spring wall burst with life. It is the same as Chaucer: “When that Aprill and her shoulders are soote…”
However, although the middle world was in harmony with nature, it also loved fashion. New styles replaced old ones. Is that stained glass window Romanesque or gothic? Romanesque churches, dating from the 11th and early 12th centuries, are round, while the gothic style they soon took on featured steeples and stained glass windows that diverted the weight of the building away from their walls. And then there is the difficult difference in gothic: ornamented, perpendicular.
In fact, both styles lead to (literally) the same dream: projecting heaven on earth. The most ambitious creations of this era, cathedrals, are architectural installations, using light, space, sculpture and scale to create a sense of God’s enveloping power. Medieval Christianity was not something you chose. It surrounded you and defined the world. The cathedrals surround you, just as in the middle universe the heavens surround the Earth a little with its villages, fields and waves.
Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire makes the connection between heaven and Earth clear with its spire, the tallest in Britain. Is this white point, which seems to be flowing like a spring from a building, a building or a sculpture? Perhaps it’s a land art, because it also points upwards and gives attention to Salisbury Plain itself, as if it’s channeling the landscape into one upward force.
The interior of Durham Cathedral works in a different way: the huge pillars around the edges seem to plant themselves in the earth like the legs of a huge elephant. God’s power seems to have multiplied and fattened them – but their abundance is mitigated by geometry. Each stone cylinder is marked with zigzags, spirals, lozenges or fluting. You are amazed at its size and eventually you are attracted by the masons’ intelligence.
James of St George made the towers of Conwy a well-rounded game. But he also built Caernarfon Castle with no curves at all: its elegant towers are polygonal. Caernarfon also has statues. Three stone eagles shine from it, symbolizing the power of Edward I, who ordered these castles to stop the Welsh. Conquest and empire: we return to the themes of the Bayeux Tapestry. The art and architecture of ancient Britain creates a vision of order: you are to be overwhelmed by cathedrals, intimidated by palaces.
However, even in the early middle ages, that idea of punishment, of looking to the sky of God and the authority of the king, created, in a kind of natural disgust, idols of chaos. The impressive frescoes in the Canterbury crypt help honor the church’s tradition. This is a world-class piece of ancient art, with scraps and errors in the margins of manuscripts, nude people walking in the borders of the Bayeux Tapestry, and a mermaid with exposed breasts painted in Durham Castle.
Slowly, the edge passed through the center. Christian self-control and martial prowess were transformed into a fictional arena for the warring factions to woo their women. Beaumaris in Anglesey looks like an amphitheater, with low towers surrounded by sparkling water. Chivalry is courtly romance although it gives rise to gothic religious art. One of the reasons why Ely’s Lady Chapel angered the Protestant iconoclasts, who smashed its statues, is that it was a great hymn of love to the Virgin Mary, appealing to Our Lady with artistic gifts.
after advertising
Late English Gothic is swept by passion, romantic wisdom. Fans, a uniquely English style, are far from Durham’s divine power. Inside King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, you look like a cluster of mushroom branches growing from the bottom of tall stones, visible above you next to a hallucinogenic ceiling of exaggerated natural colors.
Immorality almost overcomes religion Wilton Diptycha portable prayer support painted for King Richard II in 1395-99. Richard kneels before a vision of the Virgin Mary and a host of blue-and-white-winged angels: a drama of blue against gold and the king’s self-confidence, the romantic relationship with Our Lady and the distance from the like-minded Normans. It is an unknown art, but by the 1500s many artists became famous. In the 1470s, Edinburgh’s Chapel of the Holy Trinity commissioned a large altarpiece with mutilated angels and a saint in shining armor from the famous Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes. Today the painting is in the Scottish National Gallery, while Trinity Chapel remains a much-reduced husk in the Old Town, where it was moved to make way for the city’s Victorian railway.
If the art of fighting Christianity reached Britain with the Normans in 1066, the end would also be precisely written. When Henry VIII began to destroy the monastic government in 1536, the entire cultural world was destroyed. Yet it’s amazing how much British art has gone through the ages – infusing our imaginations with sophisticated messages from another world.
You can’t see the great art of the Middle Ages for nothing
Durham Cathedral
Entry to Britain’s most impressive cathedral is free, although a £5 donation is polite and it’s worth buying a ticket to the museum to see the relics of St Cuthbert.
The Lewis Chessmen
Ivory chess pieces from Scandinavia depict armies in all ranks, including pieces like those on the Bayeux Tapestry. In the British Museum’s free permanent buildings.
Norham Castle
The stronghold of this tower in Northumberland once guarded the border country and later inspired one of Turner’s wooziest paintings – English Heritage, free of charge.
Edinburgh’s Holy Trinity Chapel commissioned Hugo van der Goes to paint this gothic masterpiece with its archangel and saint in shining armor. Free at the Scottish National Gallery.
Pictures of Flint Castle
The free wreck of this lake in North Wales is where Richard II sat down and told sad tales of the kings death, waiting for the removal of Bolingbroke.
