Christ's strongman
England’s medieval parish churches were originally decorated with wall paintings, collections of images depicting Bible stories, the lives of the saints, and other Christian subjects. Church interiors once glowed with colour as a result, but because of the iconoclasm that followed the English Reformation, most of these paintings were destroyed – commonly by overpainting with whitewash. Some have been restored, but whitewash, the removal of whitewash, and other wear and tear mean that most medieval English church wall paintings are at best fragmentary and faded.
Some of the best are in the church of St Botolph’s, Slapton, Northamptonshire. The subjects, painted in the 14th and 15th centuries, include the Annunciation, the Resurrection, St Michael weighing souls, and St Francis receiving the stigmata. But the best survival is a large painting of St Christopher, one of the most popular subjects of the medieval wall painters.
St Christopher is on the north wall of nave. This is the usual position for a painting of St Christopher – perhaps because he was the patron saint of travellers and his image was designed to be the first thing travellers would see as they entered through the south door opposite.
The image refers to a popular medieval story about the saint. He was said to have been a tall, strong man, who declared that he would serve only a person of supreme power. First he went into the service of a king, but the king was not supremely powerful because he feared Satan. So then Christopher became the servant of Satan, but Satan turned out to be fearful of the cross. So Christopher resolved to serve Christ, and a hermit told him that one way he could do this and use his strength was to help the weak cross a river. One of those he helped was a child who grew heavier and heavier as Christopher carried him. The child revealed that he was Jesus Christ and that he was carrying the weight of the world.
In the Slapton painting, the marks that delineate the saint’s face and the folds of his garment show the economical draftsmanship at work here; the red and earth colours give a hint at how bright the painting would originally have been. The saint’s staff is turning into a living tree, a miracle that happened when Christopher had been baptized by Christ. The teeming life of the river is represented by a handful of rather perky fish and, in the bottom left-hand corner, a small mermaid who, holding a mirror, is there as an embodiment of pride. The saint turns away from her and looks towards the traveller entering the church, and his gaze is as direct as it was 600 years ago.
12 comments:
Is this the church that inspired J.L.Carr`s "A month in the country"?
J. L. Carr spent a lot of time in the late 1960s and early 1970s trying to save the Northamptonshire church of St Faith, Newton in the Willows. This church was eventually made redundant and turned into a field study centre. Carr described it as a 'little church all alone in the meadows', and showed it Simon Gray and Kennith Trodd (screenwriter and producer) when they were starting work on the film of A Month in the Country. Carr's experience with Newton church was both absorbing and frustrating, and probably inspired him to write a novel set mainly in a church. But Newton was not really like the fictional Osgodby, and had no wall paintings.
And there was another church that Carr saw, also I think in Northants, at a place called Faxton, which had traces of wall paintings and which was destroyed. He probably saw many churches with paintings in his time, maybe including Slapton, which had their share in the inspiration of the book. Which is simply wonderful, by the way.
Oh, and Kenith Trodd's first name has just one 'n'. Sorry.
Getting away from the point somewhat Byron Rogers,a writer I much admire,has written an excellent biography of J.L.Carr and living in Northamptonshire he has many very good accounts of this part of the world.
Yes. Byron Rogers, The Last Englishman. It's a very good biography, and covers in some detail Carr's attempts to save the church at Newton. Rogers's biography of the poet R. S. Thomas is also very good.
With reference to my previous post
"the green lane to nowhere" by Byron Rogers is wonderful in its accounts of Northamptonshire I am pretty certain that you will be already aware of this but to anyone else interested its essential.
Ah, now then. Newton-in-the-Willows is certainly worth tracking down, not just for the church and the J.L.Carr connection, but also for the enormous dovecote up in the field behind.
Faxton I saw in 1970, by then just a ruinous churchyard and a pair of derelict semis. Very eerie, one room upstairs had a pentangle drawn on the floorboards with a big dead crow in the middle. Ran away, ran away.
Its a thing of simple beauty. I work at Westminster Abbey,and we have a couple of uncovered wall paintings there. I find it astonishing that they survive at all. The artists must have had a very sure idea of technique. Could you enlighten me on that?
Martin: Thanks for your comment. There's so much to say about the techniques used in wall painting - a subject I hope to return to in a future post. Meanwhile, I recommend Roger Rosewell's recent book, Medieval Wall Paintings (Boydell, 2008), which covers most aspects - historical, iconographical, technical - of these wonderful works of art.
Thanks for the advice. I'll track it down.
Good photo: I have posted it and linked across to this on the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature website. Hope that's OK with you -- if not, I'll take it down.
David: Thanks for your interest – no problem at all about posting the photograph and link on the SSMLL site.
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