Quincunx

Last November I wrote a post aboutThe Westminster pavement which linked to an article by the artist David Clayton. He has now followed that with a piece on the New Liturgical Movement about the Quincunx, a central element in the design of that and other cosmatesque pavements. His post can be read here.

The Quincunx in the cosmati pavement of Sants Cecilia in Trastevere

In England, apart from the great medieval Westminster pavement, a modern cosmati floor can be seem in the sanctuary of Buckfast Abbey.

The Westminster pavement

At the time of the Papal visit I posted about the image of the Pope standing on the wonderful thirteenth century cosmati sanctuary pavement of Westminster abbey. Now David Clayton, whom I knew when he was here in Oxford, has drawn attention on NLM to a post by another friend, Stratford Caldecott, and a post he has produced about the pavement. It includes a short documentary and can be found here.

The abbey's own site about the pavement can be read here, and there is another account here , and there is also a newspaper article about its restoration here.

The Queen views the great pavement in Westminster Abbey

Image: Westminster Abbey

If you would like to read more about the pavement there is Richard Foster Patterns of Thought: (1991), and the pavement is also discussed in J.D.North The Ambassadors' Secret. Professor North's book is a fascinating exploration of the themes and symbolism in Holbein's painting, now in the National Gallery, of the French ambassadors to King Henry VIII in 1533, and it is a book well worth reading on its own account.