Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Tuesday 4 December 2012

St Barbara in art and architecture


Last year I posted a piece on this her feast day about St Barbara and thought that this year I would share some more images of her they are taken from a post by John Dillon on the Medieval Religion discussion group.

The Great Martyr Barbara
St Barbara
Mid - eighth century
Sant' Maria Antiqua, Rome

Image: icon-art.info


A forceful painting from eleventh century Campania

 Image: cattedrale-calvirisorta


St. Barbara, St. Thomas near Frymburk, about 1380, wooden poly-chromic sculpture, state after restoration, complex restoration by done Stojan Genčev, Company Kotangens s.r.o., Prague, 1997-1998

A relatively recently restored later fourteenth-century (circa 1380) polychromed wooden statue of St Barbara from the church of St. Thomas (Sv. Tomáš) near Frymburk (Český Krumlov dist.)
in the Czech Republic, now in the regional Museum in Český Krumlov following restoration in 1997-8.

Image: encyklopedie.ckrumlov



Statue of St Barbara and her tower c. 1430
 
Image: Bode-Museum Berlin



St Barbara
Tilman Riemanschneider
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum

Image: Wikimedia

Probably the finest later medieval church dedicated to her is the church of St Barbara at Kutna Hora in Bohemia.


The church of St Barbara Kutna Hora

Image:vtourist.com

A mining town it began this great church to the patroness of miners in 1388 but it was not completed until 1905. There is an account of it here. It is of the wonders of later medieval central European gothic architecture and there are some fine photographs of the vaults here.





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