English Panel Paintings 1400-1558

This is a landmark study of East Anglia’s fifteenth-century rood-screen paintings-the largest surviving body of late medieval painting in England. Based on Audrey Baker’s 1937 PhD thesis and newly expanded by conservators Ann Ballantyne and Pauline Plummer, it catalogues over a thousand painted panels from more than 100 screens. Richly illustrated and meticulously documented, the book offers insights into the design, materials, techniques, and patronage behind these important ecclesiastical artworks, celebrating a lifetime of scholarship and conservation expertise.

The art of East Anglia was pre-eminent during the late thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth century. Wooden screens with painted panels were one of the most essential fittings of late pre-Reformation churches, serving both to protect the high altar and to define the division between the chancel and the nave and aisles. Whereas very few screens dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries survive, the extant fifteenth-century rood-screen paintings in East Anglia form the largest body of late mediaeval painting to be found in England. Details of more than a thousand panels from over one hundred screens are listed, described and in many cases illustrated in this volume, accompanied by commentaries on their design, techniques and materials used in their making and who paid for them. The basis of this book is the PhD thesis submitted by Audrey Baker in 1937 to the Courtauld Institute of Art of the University of London. The text has been edited and extended by Ann Ballantyne and Pauline Plummer into the expanded version published here – a fitting celebration of Audrey’s contribution to the field in her 104th year! Audrey Baker, PhD, FSA, born 1908, an art historian in the field of mediaeval art history, attended St Hilda’s College, Oxford before beginning her doctoral studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She has published a number of papers on the iconography of wall paintings as well as numerous articles on local history. Ann Ballantyne is a conservator of mediaeval wall paintings. Pauline Plummer is a painter and painting conservator specialising in the in-situ conservation of mediaeval oil painting on wood, and has worked at the majority of the churches mentioned in this book.

Foreword by Simon Watney

Preface by Ann Ballantyne

Acknowledgements

List of churches with figurative screens

Map of Norfolk and Suffolk and part of Essex

Introduction

Surviving rood-screen paintings

Early screens

The Ranworth Group

Paintings connected with Ranworth

Cawston

Paintings on parchment or paper

Foreign influences and landscape backgrounds

The iconography of rood-screen paintings

The popularity of the saints in the late Middle Ages

The Godhead, the Virgin and the Life of Christ

Figures which form part of a series

Individual saints

The making and decoration of rood screens

Bequests and contracts

Timber and construction by Joe Dawes

Painting techniques and materials, expanded and updated by Pauline Plummer

Past destructive treatments and conservation today

Appendix I Gazetteer of churches

Appendix II Donors of screens where paintings have survived

Appendix III List of images on East Anglian screens

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

• By (author) Audrey M. Baker PhD, FSA

"This is above all a useful book. [...] Throughout there are excellent colour photographs, with the majority of site illustrated with both general views and some fascinating details focusing on the decorative borders which are so often overlooked in relation to the figurative programmes which they frame. [...] The unique value of this book is its bringing together in one publication this rich heritage of English medieval paintings, many of which are largely unknown, and presenting them in such detail and with so much useful supporting material." Ecclesiology Today, 47/48 (July 2013) pp. 141-142 "[English Panel Paintings 1400-1558] is the first time that information concerning all the figural screens of Norfolk and Suffolk has been exhaustively gathered, and illustrated in colour...It is in no small part thanks to Audrey Baker, Pauline Plummer and Ann Ballantyne that East Anglia's figural rood screens finally have a chance of being rescued from obscurity, and of receiving the attention they richly deserve." The Picture Restorer, 40 (Spring 2012) pp. 43-44
—

[English Panel Paintings 1400-1558] is the first time that information concerning all the figural screens of Norfolk and Suffolk has been exhaustively gathered, and illustrated in colour...It is in no small part thanks to Audrey Baker, Pauline Plummer and Ann Ballantyne that East Anglia's figural rood screens finally have a chance of being rescued from obscurity, and of receiving the attention they richly deserve.

—

This is above all a useful book. [...] Throughout there are excellent colour photographs, with the majority of site illustrated with both general views and some fascinating details focusing on the decorative borders which are so often overlooked in relation to the figurative programmes which they frame. [...] The unique value of this book is its bringing together in one publication this rich heritage of English medieval paintings, many of which are largely unknown, and presenting them in such detail and with so much useful supporting material.

—