Restoring Salford Cathedral

As a consequence no doubt of a searching made the other day the algorithm delivered to my inbox a video about the recent restoration of both the fabric and significant features of the original decorative scheme in Salford Cathedral.

Wikipedia has an illustrated history of the building at Salford_Cathedral

I have only ever seen the building from a distance but it  is clearly a fine mid-nineteenth century essay in the eastern English fourteenth century school, copying significant features from Howden, Selby, and Newark. This may reflect the interests and visits of its Sheffield based architect. 

The video can be seen at Salford Cathedral: A Glory Renewed and Restored

Manchester might not immediately come to mind as good cathedral visiting territory yet in Manchester Cathedral it has a wonderful fifteenth century collegiate church elevated to cathedral rank in 1847, the year before what became in 1852 the cathedral in Salford was completed in one of the heartlands of residual Catholicism.

Queen Elizabeth I in Australia

There is an article in the Financial Review about the acquisition by the Art Gallery of South Australia of a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I and datable to 1565.

In recent years more attention has been paid to the Portrait painted of the young Queen in the 1560s and the message they sought to convey. Apart from the Coronation portrait, which survives as a 1590s copy, they are usually relatively small and show her soberly dressed, if not entirely in black, with discreet jewellery and holding a prayer book. From the middle years of her reign in the 1570s the images become larger, the Queen is elaborately and fashionably dressed and coiffured and bedecked in jewels. As the reign continued the images became larger, ever more sumptuous and bejewelled, ever more a living icon.

The painting now in Australia is rather old-fashioned in its framing as it is reminiscent of those of the Yorkist kings. Maybe it was intended as an addition to a series in that style. 

The face is unmistakable, the clothing expensive and detailed. but still relatively restrained. The image is one that conveys something of the uncertainties of the first decade of the reign when the succession, the possible marriage negotiation, the religious settlement and the international situation were still all to play for.

The article should be accessible at Australia-first painting is nearly 500 years old

Unfortunately I cannot find an online image of the work that will download. So much for the typical art gallery attitude to making their collections available to the world beyond their doors.

Too darn hot

As the temperature breaks the record that goes all the way back to yesterday a friend shared with me a note he had received.via X:

Not saying it’s hot on the London Underground today. but I’ve just seen Virgil leading Dante down the steps at Baker Street tube station. They’ll be taking the Circle Line.

Dante and Virgil at the Gates of Hell

by William Blake

Image: niceartgallery.com

Investigating Medieval Sicilians

A study of the genetic make-up of the medieval population of Sicily is reported upon by Phys.org

The evidence across something like a millennium indicates a complex pattern of migration and also mixing of ethnic groupings. This complements and confirms the historic and cultural evidence of the island being at the cultural crossroads of the Mediterranean for centuries.

The article can be read at Sicily remained a medieval melting pot despite major political and religious upheavals, ancient DNA reveals

I would disagree with the final comments in the article that Sicily became part of the Holy Roman Empire. More accurately it came under the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor as King of Sicily from 1194 to 1250, but not part of the Empire as such. The formal territory of the Empire extended as far south as the Papal States, or could be seen to include them, but no further south. 

The arms of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 

1816-1861

 

Image: Wikimedia

The complexity of the armorial bearings reflects the complex history of the two kingdoms and the engagement of many dynasties with their governance from the high middle ages onwards.

Today there is still a tendency, perhaps a strong one, to see Sicily as the European back-of-beyond, poor, corrupt, run by the mafia, nestling under a volcano - nice for the occasional holiday but not somewhere to spend a long time.

This is in part a consequence of the unification of Italy, when the north asset-stripped the south and stationed troops for decades in the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to keep it compliant. It might have been a useful stepping stone in 1943 for the Allies, but the post 1945 division of Europe rendered it once more a run-down region dreaming dreams of its past as it decayed and was a dubious political fiefdom in the post 1946 Italian state.

 In the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries however it was vibrant society, linking Western Europe to the Byzantine Empire, and to the Crusader states in the Holy Land, with strong ties to Spain and the North African coast. The art and architecture of these centuries is amazing and it was a wealthy society. There is little wonder that it was the especial jewel in the crown of the Emperor Frederick II, and coveted by other monarchs in the decades and centuries following his death.

I do recommend the works of John Julius Norwich “The Normans in the South” and “The Kingdom in the Sun”, David Abulafia’s “Emperor Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor”, and for the later centuries Harold Acton’s two very detailed volumes on “The Bourbons of Naples 1734-1825” and “The Last Bourbons of Naples 1825-1861” and Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa’s “The Leopard”.

The Kingdoms of Naples and of Sicily in 1794

Image: Geographicus Rare Antique Maps

A Tapestry returns to Oxburgh Hall

It is always satisfying when an historic item returns to its home after a long interval. The BBC News website recently reported the return to Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk of a tapestry from the house which was sold more than a century ago. 

The tapestry depicts a scene from the story of Esther, which appears to have been a popular subject in the sixteenth century with patrons and artists.

The illustrated report can be viewed at Lost Tudor tapestry returned home to Oxburgh Hall after 100 years

Nuns and Bankers

The Conversation has an interesting online article about the role played in late medieval Vienna by women religious as fining bodies for annuities and other financial loans. I had heard the author speak to an online seminar and was pleased to have a written summary of her research. I do not know how widespread this practice was but it was clearly part of Viennese economic and social life.

The article can be seen at Before banks, nuns lent money: how convents helped power medieval Vienna’s economy

Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist

Today is the Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist

He is one of only three figures in the New Testament - the others being Our Lord and Our Lady - to have a feast to celebrate their birthday. His death is commemorated separately at the end of August.

Most depictions of the Great Forerunner show him as a solitary figure in the wilderness or concentrate on his martyrdom. This illumination showing his birth is unusual amongst his iconography.

The Birth of St John the Baptist

Silvestro dei Gherarducci

1370-71

Image: Walker Art Gallery Liverpool

A tempera painting on vellum showing the letter D, taken from an illuminated choirbook at a Camaldolese monastery in Florence. The letter is decorated on three corners with floral motifs. The image set within the letter is of the birth of St. John the Baptist. The Virgin Mary is holding the infant on the front left, wearing a blue cloak over red dress. In the background, his mother Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, is still in bed being attended by a nun, while his father Zechariah seated on the front right who has been speechless since he was told of the birth by the Archangel Gabriel, writes "His name is John."

Surviving in a heatwave

As we swelter and shelter from the current temperatures  here in the UK and across western Europe I came upon a video from Medieval Way which looks at how people managed to keep themselves and their food supplies cool in past centuries. 

It is normally thought the earlier middle ages were warmer and followed from about 1300 by the beginnings of the ‘Little Ice Age’ which deepened into the seventeenth century before working itself out in the early nineteenth century. That does not mean that exceptionally hot summers, such as that of 1540, or hot spells, did not occur.

I am no scientist but even I can understand and recall these pre air-conditioning features of daily life. I can still recall, after seventy years, the coolness of the cellar, and indeed the hall,  in my grandmother’s mid-Victorian house, the sun-blinds over traditional large shop windows, photographs of Edwardian country houses bedecked in similar blinds - their casings still survive at the Oxford Union’s building, the curious earth ware device to keep the extra pint of milk in cold water before refrigerators became normal, the slightly sinister looking meat safe with its fine mesh….

Most of those are much more recent than the medieval centuries but the sense of a cool interior even in really hot weather when entering a centuries old building with thick walls, be it a cottage or a church, is both palpable and so refreshing.  

 

The video can be watched at Medieval Peasant Knew Something About Cooling We Forgot