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.


Wednesday, 2 February 2022

Candlemas


Following on from the paintings by the fifteenth century south German artist Friedrich Herlin which I reproduced for the Circumcision and for Epiphany last month here is his depiction of  the Presentation in the Temple.



The Presentation in the Temple
Friedrich Herlin. 1462

Stadtmuseum Nördlingen

Image: Web Gallery of Art

The painting is presumably the left hand panel of a now dismantled altarpiece.

As with others of Herlin’s paintings and those of his contemporaries in the Low Countries, Germany, Austria and Iberia there is a delight and skill in depicting textiles and objects from daily life and dress which draws the viewer into his world. That world was indeed surely a more colourful and stylish world than so many people are now led to believe through cinema and other media.


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