Photo: Margaret of York's crown. Silver-gilt, enamels, precious stones and pearls. c.1461-74. Aachen Cathedral Treasury. Photo: Pit Siebigs. © Domkapitel Aachen.
Grabbing her cloak and affecting a spooky laugh, Penelope Parkin hailed a passing stagecoach and headed to the capital for a taste of the Gothic.
Gothic, Art for England at the V&A until January 18, 2004, charts the Gothic era 1400-1547, spanning the reigns of Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII and Henry VIII.
According to Curator Richard Marks: "The late medieval years were a time of conspicuous artistic consumption when unprecedented numbers of English men and women bought, commissioned and built on a lavish scale."
Photo: Princess Cecily c.1482-7. Stained and painted glass. © Glasgow Museums: The Burrell Collection.
The 15th Century also saw the advent of the "Act dehaeretico comburendo", which licensed the burning of heretics. Little wonder then that many of the expensively crafted relics on show are religious and that even domestic life was fervently Catholic.
In keeping with the exhibition’s dour religious theme, a pair of ominous looking church doors from 1520 greets one on arrival. Two statues of a bull and a griffin: ‘The Dacre Beasts’ and an array of red and blue stained glass windows add to this imposingly heavy feel. So far, so scarily gothic…
Organised thematically, the exhibits proceed to illuminate Gothic Royalty, with a wry video representation of William and Harry as the Princes in the Tower, moving on to War and Chivalry, City and Town, Household, Church and gruesomely Death.
All categories seem to provide a great excuse to display a host of ostentatious gold and silver relics.
Photo: effigy of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Gilt-bronze c.1449-50. St Mary's Church, Warwick. © Professor Richard Marks.
Fortunately many of these liven up proceedings a little, especially the fabulous silver statue of St George and the Dragon made for the Armourers and Brasiers’ Company of London.
Many heraldic tapestries are also displayed, though their description as ‘household’ items seems a little ambitious unless they were exceptionally wealthy ones!
Many depict hunting scenes, for example, ‘The Boar and Bear Hunt’ 1425 – 1430, a lively portrait of animals hugely outnumbered by a crowd of over zealous medieval spear throwers.
Photo: detail of the Bedford Hours and Psalter. Illumination on vellum, between 1414 and 1422. British Library. © By permission of the British Library.
Coming back down to earth, a few more realistic everyday 15th century objects are also on show, including prayer volumes such as Sir John Donne’s ‘Book of Hours’ 1480, a kind of ‘Mrs Beaton’s guide’ to a structured devotional life.
Pilgrimages were also a common feature of Gothic life and involved the use of several intriguing offerings such as wax figures modelled in the image of favourite saints. Prayer cards were also often bought as pious souvenirs and stuck in religious books.
Pilgrims en route from Canterbury and York also used to buy cheap badges cast from moulds in large numbers. Apparently these were the cheapest souvenirs. Those on display were recovered from the Thames foreshore.
Sadly such well-trodden routes were erased during the Gothic era following Martin Luther’s 95 theses condemning the Catholic Church in 1517 and finally Henry VIII’s appointment as the Supreme Head of the Church of England in 1539.
Photo: Bishop Fox's Crosier. Silver-gilt and enamel, probably beginning of the 16th century. Corpus Christi College, Oxford. © Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
These two events inevitably led to the suppression of the first pilgrimage sites in 1536 and the dissolution of the remaining monastic houses and friaries in 1540.
This is an impressive exhibition aimed at Catholics, royalists, historians and anyone interested in finding out more about these themes of the Gothic era. It comprises an impressive array of Gothic artefacts, particularly religious ones.
If you’re looking for an exhibition based solely upon Gothic Art however, you may be disappointed.
