The Grotesque in Church Art Part 7

At the same time when they are considered in conjunction with the most perfect of the paintings of their period they are by no means so low in the scale of merit as at the first thought might be supposed.

Outside the present purpose of looking at them as unintentional grotesques they are very valuable specimens of the English art of painting of dates which have, except in illuminations, no other examples.

Those of St. Mary's, Guildford, are very quaint. The first selected from the series is a representation of Christ attending the ministration of St.

John the Baptist. St. John has apparently taken down to the river bank a cla.s.sic font, in which is seated a convert. The Baptist himself, wearing a Phrygian cap (probably Saxon), is turning away from the figures of Christ and the man in the font, and is apparently addressing a company which does not appear in the picture. Just as the font was put in to make the idea of baptism easily understood, so, we may suppose, the curious b.u.t.tons on thongs, or whatever they are, were shewn attached to St. John's wrist, to indicate that he is speaking of the "shoe-latchets." The waters and bank of the Jordan are indicated in a few lines.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CASTING OUT OF DEVILS, GUILDFORD.]

The other selection is still more bizarre. It evidently portrays Christ casting out devils. The chief point of interest in this painting is the original conception of the devils. Anything more vicious, degraded, and abhorrent, it would be difficult to produce in so few lines. Roughly speaking, they are a compound of the hawk, the hog, and the monkey; this curious ill.u.s.tration is an excellent pendant to the marks made upon early Satanic depictions on a previous page. The faces are Saxon, except in the case of the man with the sword, who is a distinct attempt at a Roman. The artist had evidently in his mind one who was set in authority.

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 ill.u.s.trating 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 vand.y.k.ed 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 ill.u.s.trates the toilsome nature of the later portion of Adam's life.

Masks and Faces.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOLIATE MASK, THE CHOIR, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

The merriest, oddest, most ill-a.s.sorted company in the world meet together in the masks and faces of Gothic ornament. s.p.a.ce could always be found for a head, and skill to execute it. Yet though the variety is immense, the faces of Gothic art will be found to cla.s.sify themselves very definitely.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOLIATE MASK, DORCHESTER, OXON.]

Perhaps the most prevalent type is the cla.s.sic mask with leaves issuing from the mouth. This may be an idea of the mask which every player in the ancient drama wore, displayed as an ornament with laurel, bay, oak, ivy, or what not, inserted in the mouth, because it was pierced for speaking through, and the only aperture in which the decorative branches could be inserted. Or seeds might germinate in sculptured masks and so have suggested the idea. Masks were hung in vineyards, etc.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOLIATE MASK, ST. MARY'S MINSTER, ISLE OF THANET.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOLIATE MASK, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

A mask above the internal tower-doorway in the Lady Chapel of Dorchester Abbey has a close resemblance to the cla.s.sic mask in the protruding lips, which, for the conveying of the voice for the great distance necessary in the arrangement of the ancient theatres, were often shaped like a shallow speaking-trumpet. The leaves appear to be the vine, and so the head, perhaps, that of Bacchus. Between the eyebrows will be noticed an angular projection. This is probably explained by a mask in a misericorde in St.

Mary's Minster, in which some object, perhaps the nasal of a helmet, comes down the middle of the forehead. The leaves in this case appear to be oak, which is, indeed, the prevailing tree used for the purpose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN MASK, ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LATE ITALIAN FOLIATE MASK, WESTMINSTER.]

Occasionally a mask with leaves has the tongue protruding.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable masks in Gothic is on another misericorde in the same town, but in St. Mary's Church; in which the features, the head-dress, the treatment of the ears, are all Indian, while the leaves are those of the palm. This is, perhaps, unique as an instance of Gothic work so nearly purely Indian in its form.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RIPON, _late Fifteenth Century_.]

Sometimes the leaves are much elaborated as in one of the late misericordes of Westminster Abbey; in a few cases the original simplicity is quite lost, and we have, as at Ripon, the mask idea run mad, inverted, and the leaves become a graceful composition of foliage, flower, and fruit.

A rosette from the tomb of Bishop de La Wich, Chichester, has four animal faces in an excellent design.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROSETTE ON TOMB OF BISHOP DE LA WICH, CHICHESTER.]

Often masks are of the simple description known as the Notch-head; these are of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They are generally found in exposed situations at some elevation, as among the series of corbels (_corbula_ a small basket) or brackets called the corbel-table, supporting a stone course or cornice. The likeness to the human face caused by the shadows of the T varies in different examples. That below, by curving back at the base, suggests the idea of a mouth. Occasionally, as at Finedon, Northamptonshire, the notch-head has its likeness to a face increased by the addition of ears.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MASK, BUCKLE, OR NOTCH HEAD, CULHAM, YORKSHIRE.]

Norman masks are interesting, as they explain some odd appearances in later work. In many churches are faces scored with lines across the cheeks, regardless of the ordinary lines of expression, in a manner closely resembling the tattoo incisions of the New Zealand warrior. This appearance, however, is simply the too faithful copying of crude Norman masks, in which the lines are meant to be the semi-circles round eyes and mouth. Moreover, the Norman heads are most often the heads of animals grinning to shew the teeth, although their general effect is that of grotesque human heads. Iffley west doorway furnishes the best example.

Here we have the well-known "beak head" ornament. The semicircle and upper portion of the jambs have single heads, not two of which are exactly alike, though all closely resemble each other. They are heads of the eagle or gryphon order, with a forehead ornament very a.s.syrian in character. The heads of the jambs are compound, being the head of a grinning beast, probably a lion, from the mouth of which emerges a gryphon head of small size. These are sometimes called "Cat-heads," and the gryphon head is sometimes considered (and perhaps occasionally shewn as such) a tongue. A fine doorway of beak-heads is at St. Peter's-in-the-East, Oxford, which church was probably executed by the workmen who were responsible for Iffley.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEAK HEADS, IFFLEY.]

It is probable that the symbolism of this is the swallowing up of night by day or _vice versa_. The outer arch of the Iffley doorway consists of zodiacal signs, and at the south doorway are other designs elsewhere mentioned in this volume, far removed from Christian intent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NORMAN MASK, ROCHESTER.]

The grotesqueness of Norman work is almost entirely unconscious. The workers were full of Byzantine ideas, and the severe and awful was their object rather than the comic. They frequently attempted pretty detail in their symbolic designs, but in all the forms which have come from their chisels it is easy to see how incomplete an embodiment they gave to their conceptions, or rather to the conceptions of their traditional school.

Norman work, beyond the Gothic, irrespective of the architectural peculiarities, has traces of its eastern origin in the cla.s.sic connection of its designs. Adel Church, near Leeds, is peculiar in having co-mingled with its eastern designs more than ordinarily tangible references to ancient Keltic worship, but nearly all Norman ideographic detail concerns itself with old-world myths.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GORGONIC MASK, EWELME.]

An excellent conception, well carried out, is in a mask which is one of a series of late carvings alternating with the gargoyles of Ewelme. In this, instead of leaves issuing from the mouth of the mask, there are two dragons. If those with leaves are deities, this surely must be one of the Furies. It is on the north side of the nave; on the exterior of the aisle, at the same side, other sculptures form a kind of irregular corbel-table, and special attention may be drawn to them as affording an indication of the derivation of such ornaments from the "antefixes" or decorated tiles occupying a nearly corresponding position in cla.s.sic architecture.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOLIATE MASK, EWELME.]

One of those on the aisle offers a further explanation of the mark before mentioned as being on the foreheads of some masks. In this case the prominences of the eyebrows branch off into foliage. This appears also to be the intention in a capital carving in Lincoln Chapter House.

Roslyn Chapel has some very realistic heads, notably of apes or gorillas near the south doorway, of which one is drawn (opposite).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOLIATE MASK, LINCOLN.]

Norman work has frequently some very grotesque heads in corbel tables and tower corners, to the odd appearance of which the decay by weather has no doubt much contributed. Two examples from Sutton Courtney, Oxfordshire, ill.u.s.trate this weather-worn whimsicality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GORILLA, ROSLYN CHAPEL.]

Then comes a crowd of faces which have no particular significance, being simply the outcome of the unrestrainable fun of the carver. Some are merely oddities, while others are full of life-like character.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GARGOYLE, SUTTON COURTNEY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WEATHER-WORN NORMAN, SUTTON COURTNEY, BERKSHIRE.]