English fourteenth century altar frontal

Also featured in the Medieval religion post on images of St Anne was this fourteenth-century English altar frontal now in Paris at the Musée National du Moyen Âge (Musée de Cluny):

Scenes from the Life of the Virgin
circa 1335
Painted wood Approx. 3 feet high by 10 feet wide
Altar frontal thought to be from the church in Thetford, Norfolk
MNMA (Cluny Museum in Paris), Acq. 1864, Cl. 7726

Also available: details of the Nativity of the Virgin, the Dormition, and the Education of the Virgin

You will have to click on these links to get a better idea of the quality of the painting than the picture of the whole will allow in this format.

I do not know the history of this piece, though it is similar to some other pieces which do survive from East Anglia -the Thornham Parva retable being the best known I suppose. I am also not clear as to which church in Thetford it is thought to have belonged - the parish church, the Cluniac priory or the Dominican friary - which I would think the likeliest, but that is only a hunch. The friary was featured on Timeteam the other year - part of it survives as ruins in the grounds of the town's grammar school.

This is similar to the Norwegian examples I referred to the other week, and a further reminder of what was once to be seen in medieval English churches.