York MinsterPurey-Cust, Arthur P. (Arthur Perceval)
History
York Minster
Purey-Cust, Arthur P. (Arthur Perceval)
Cathedrals -- England; York Minster
Sometimes groups of figures may be noticed evidencing, by their utter
lack of connection with their environment, that they have been
transplanted from some other window. Sometimes a single figure, under a
Decorated canopy, stands out in a window of distinctly Perpendicular
tracery. Sometimes several of such figures fill separate lights when
they have evidently been intended to be together. Sometimes kneeling
figures, each of which had been intended to represent the donor of some
window, have been brought together in a rather amusing and inharmonious
fellowship. Sometimes the whole of some large figure has been removed,
and only the outline left, which has been indiscriminately filled up
with a patchwork of scraps of all kinds and subjects. This is specially
noticeable in the window on the north side of the choir, where the
letters R.S., in the bordure, indicate that it had been put up to the
memory of Archbishop Scrope; here there are three large outlines of
female figures, each with a child in her arms, one of them probably the
Virgin, but all detail has been obliterated. Sometimes only a portion of
a figure remains, _e.g._, a beautiful and venerable head and shoulders
of some grave ecclesiastic in the most delicate mezzotint; or a
dignified face with splendid crown and nimbus, and cope and pectoral
cross adorning what remains of a saintly figure; or a crowned head, in
a maze of painted fragments, around which the initials, E., in the
bordure, evidently denote Edward the Confessor. Again, there are legs
only, with the water flowing over the feet and the end of the staff
which the hands had grasped, evidently the remains of some grand figure
of St. Christopher, a very frequent and favourite figure in the church
windows of York. Or, again, draped figures of ecclesiastics, complete
almost to the hem of their robes, but destitute of feet, which may be
discovered in the tracery above, where they have been utilised simply to
supply some fracture. Sometimes heads and bodies, which have evidently
no real association, are found united together. The former occasionally
the work of some modern painter, who had attempted with his own brush to
supply what was lacking. This is manifestly the case in the west windows
of the central aisle of the nave, where the faces of the archbishops
are evidently modern insertions, and in the west window of the south
aisle, where a stately figure of our Lord on the Cross, tended by little
angels, has been terribly marred by a most repulsive modern face, which
has been added. But sometimes the head and body are both mediæval, but
sadly incongruous, for male faces are to be found on female shoulders,
and delicate crowned heads of virgins or angels on the stalwart bodies
of men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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