If fancy takes you to Paris in the next few months – the fires will probably be out by then – then don’t miss the chance to visit the magnificently restored Hôtel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde, and a jewel of an exhibition at the Al Thani Collection there, Medieval Treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum: When the English Spoke French.
More than seventy of the finest medieval works of art from the Victoria & Albert Museum are displayed in an exhibition that present a poignant reminder of England’s rich Catholic past and its interconnectedness with European politics, region, trade and the manufacture of luxury religious and secular art. It speaks of friendships, diplomacy and the refined tastes of the upper echelons of church and state that circulated around England and Europe before the Reformation.
English monasteries were intimately connected to those on the continent, which fully enabled the integration of English art and style with that of the Carolingian Empire. For example, at Canterbury in around 1155-60 the monk and scribe Eadwine created a new manuscript based on a treasured volume known as the Utrecht Psalter, which was painted in Reims between 820 and 830. The fact that two copies of this manuscript are known of today, almost one thousand years later, illustrate how important a text it was in the monastery at Canterbury.
The vivid colours and engaging narratives on the page on display in Paris are magnificent. The leaf that depicts Eadwine himself survives in Cambridge accompanied by an inscription that celebrates the work and its master: “The Prince of Scribes am I.” It is difficult not to agree with this grandiose statement and we are transported back to the flickering light of the candlelit cloister, and Eadwine, fingers muddied by pigments, painstakingly creating this work of extraordinary beauty.
Two other works displayed near the Psalter give us a sense of the strength and importance of English Catholic networks in Europe before and after the Reformation. The Gloucester Candlestick, a gilded bronze marvel of writhing beasts and figures is here, perhaps the only surviving example of the sophistication and brilliance of English goldsmiths’ work from the earlier medieval period. It is a wondrous thing to behold, and speaks directly though its inscriptions, offering visitors a chance to imagine its history and its physical journey from the abbey at Gloucester to a showcase in Paris.
The inscriptions tell us it was made for Abbot Peter of Gloucester, who held that office between 1107 and 1113. “The devotion of Abbot Peter and his gentle flock gave me to the church of St Peter at Gloucester.” The inscription around the inside of the drip pan tells us that “This flood of light, this work of virtue, bright with holy doctrine instructs us, so that Man shall not be benighted in vice”. It refers to the four evangelists depicted around the knop, whose gospels shine, like the candle flame, through the battle of virtue over vice represented by the tangled mass of figures on the stem.
A third inscription tells us the candlestick was given as a gift by Thomas Le Poché to Le Mans Cathedral in north-west France. It was probably this gift that saved it from destruction in the fire at Gloucester in 1122, which razed the cathedral and almost all its contents to the ground, and saved it from further destruction at the Reformation. It remained at Le Mans until the French Revolution and the great dispersal of church and aristocratic treasures in the early nineteenth-century, before being acquired by the young Victoria and Albert Museum at the sale of Prince Soltikoff’s collection in 1861.
The Becket Mitre is here too, a gift from the Archbishop of Sens to Cardinal Wiseman in 1842; echoes of the medieval past resound around the displays. The vestments at Sens have always been held as Becket’s after his two visits there in exile in 1164 and 1170. The mitre’s significance illustrates how, despite the destruction of his shrine at Canterbury in 1538, the cult of St Thomas of Canterbury was kept alive both by recusants and exiled Catholics, and by the priests of people of the places in Europe connected with his name.
We must also acknowledge the Bridgettine nuns of Syon Abbey for their steadfast care of one of the most exceptional pieces of Opus Anglicanum – fine medieval English embroidery – to survive. The Syon Cope glitters in the exhibition, and shows the exceptional quality of the most luxurious and sophisticated artistic work for which English embroiderers were famed across Europe, from Scandinavia to Rome and Toledo. Worked in gold and silver, silk and often decorated with pearls and precious stones, they were gifts of kings and queens to popes and bishops.
These works speak particularly of England’s Catholic past and the feats of artistic skill and religious devotion that created them. However, the exhibition incorporates other fascinating stories of artistic exchange and refined taste that were enjoyed by England’s elite medieval patrons. The very materials these magnificent embroidered creations were made from were also a testament to the commercial networks that were at the heart of England’s connections with the wider world. England’s many foreign queens – often the result of diplomatic alliances with France – brought retinues of artists and craftsmen, royal gifts and new fashions and tastes that informed art and production throughout the medieval period.
English princesses also helped to disseminate and integrate English art and style on the continent. A ewer, probably made for Margaret of York and emblazoned with a Yorkist Rose is displayed here alongside the Valance Casket, whose myriad coats of arms – Valance, Brabant, Brittany, England, Angouleme and Lacy – speaks of the interconnected royal and aristocratic houses of the countries’ ruling classes.
To end: a unique piece, a panel, probably a book cover, made in Hereforshire in the mid-twelfth century. The carving, depicting the Deposition of the Lord from the Cross, is exquisite. Sorrow is expressed with profound skill and care; it resonates with emotion. Walrus ivory was more commonly used in England at this time and the elephant ivory this plaque was made from is exceptionally rare. It must have been imported, but travel across Europe was not uncommon, and pilgrimages to major shrines were not unusual.
It is recorded that the Oliver de Merlimond, chief steward to Herefordshire noble Hugh de Mortimer, made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela between 1131 and 1143. Perhaps he acquired this valuable piece of ivory and commissioned this remarkable work of art. How many of us haven’t been on pilgrimage and been beguiled be the local wares and crafts for sale around us?
The Al Thani Collection and the Victoria & Albert Museum have put on an exceptionally beautiful and thought-provoking exhibition, which readers of the Catholic Herald will surely appreciate greatly. Follow in the footsteps of princesses and prelates, then: to Paris!
Medieval Treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum: When the English Spoke French is at the Hôtel de Marine, Paris, until 22 October.
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