Title: Alabaster representations of the Holy Spirit and allegations of Lollard vandalism
Author(s): Fergus Cannan
Source: Sculpture Journal. 15.1 (June 2006): p92.
Document Type: Article
Full Text:
The dove is the Christian symbol of the Holy Ghost, from the words of St John the Baptist, 'I saw the spirit coming down from heaven like a dove' (John 1:32). In this sense the dove, representing one third of the Holy Trinity, the union of the three parts of the Christian God into one, was represented many times in alabaster, a fine-grained form of gypsum (hydrous calcium sulphate). Images of the Trinity were produced by medieval English sculptors as part of an industry which flourished vigorously in England from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. High-relief images of the Trinity were among the most popular images carved by 'alabastermen' in Nottingham, Burton-on-Trent, York and London, both for sale across England and for export--so far, 125 medieval English Trinity images are known to exist. (1)
The simplest variety of alabaster Trinity took the form of a seated God the Father depicted as an old bearded man, holding God the Son crucified in front of him, while God the Holy Spirit, appearing as a small dove, rests on the top or near the top of the cross. (2) The fact that the great majority of these alabaster doves have been either lost or badly damaged has led to an assumption by some scholars that they were deliberately removed in an act of religiously inspired violence by Lollard heretics. This assumption has achieved a degree of credibility, which is unfortunate because it is wholly unfounded and, moreover, is based upon misunderstandings of the medieval English alabaster industry and the nature of Lollardism.
The confusion seems to have begun following the publication of Margaret Aston's seminal work Lollards and Reformers, (3) in which an illustration of a damaged alabaster Trinity from the Victoria and Albert Museum (fig. 1) is placed alongside a discussion of Lollard antipathy towards visual representations of the Holy Spirit. (4) Because the dove symbolizing the Holy Spirit is missing from that particular Trinity image, several subsequent scholars
misinterpreted this juxtaposition of text and illustration and concluded that Aston was indicating it to be a victim of Lollard iconoclasm--that it had been 'corrected' by the removal of the offensive dove to meet Lollard beliefs.
Iconoclasm is an intriguing and, it must be admitted, attractive and exciting explanation for the almost wholesale disappearance of Holy Spirit doves from English alabaster sculptures of the Trinity (figs 2 and 3). Jeffrey Denton wrote of the very same figure of the Trinity some years later that the dove was missing, having been 'we must assume, deliberately destroyed'. (5) Norbert Schnitzler, citing Aston, likewise said of the same alabaster carving that the Holy Spirit 'usually hovering between God the Father and Christ was intentionally removed from the sculpture'. (6)
Can this really be so? The theory is neat and sounds plausible. For a start, there is no doubt that the Lollards, a late medieval English heretical movement, were offended by visualizations of the Holy Spirit. (7)
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Lollard opposition to religious art stemmed from their fear that images of the divine were often confused with the divine itself: that the statues and paintings that were contemplated during prayer were regarded as in some way themselves invested with divine and supernatural powers. In the case of the Trinity, the danger was particularly strong, since God the Father and the Holy Spirit were non-bodily and therefore by definition impossible to visualize, and only intelligible or made 'visible' by faith. To the Oxford academic and the most influential Lollard theoretician John Wycliffe (c. 1335-84) this was 'undoubtedly idolatry'. (8)
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While it is indisputable that acts of Lollard image-breaking did occur, such incidents were rare and sporadic. (9) As for injury to alabaster carvings of the Trinity, the chief stumbling block for any suggestion of Lollard involvement is the fact that the great majority of surviving medieval English alabasters were never displayed in England, but were exported to the Continent. Even today, more than 2,000 English alabaster carvings, usually panels from altarpieces or single devotional pieces, survive on the mainland of Europe. Many more have been lost, while others doubtless wait to be discovered. (10)
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It took time for scholars to recognize these carvings as English, probably due to a mistaken prejudice among some historians that England was incapable of having a developed art export trade of its own. Early writers often assumed English alabasters to be Flemish or Italian, and sometimes Spanish. For example, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Jean Laurent photographed English panels of the Resurrection and the Adoration of Mary and Joseph in the Museo Arqueologico Provincial, Cordoba, and the photographs, now in the V&A, were labelled 'Spanish'. Little was then known about the alabaster industry, though someone later did amend the labels to 'English?' (11)
In fact, most of the alabasters in English museums today were made as exports and have only returned to their country of origin in the last century and a half, after hundreds of years abroad. (12) The Trinity that has been the subject of this debate (fig. 1) is a perfect case in point. Although now in London, it was acquired in Paris, and was, prior to that, in Brussels. (13) Dating from about 1400, the heyday of the English alabaster industry when cheap works of alabaster art were exported throughout Europe, its large size indicates that it was intended for display in a parish church. It is unlikely that this carving, like the majority of Trinity reliefs (fig. 2, for instance), would ever have been seen by the Lollards and thus it cannot have been damaged by them, regardless of whether they might have liked to or not.
Recent analysis by Sofia Marques allows us to visualize this misunderstood sculpture as it once was. (14) The amount of paint is perhaps surprising, given that polished alabaster is a handsome stone in its own right. The face of God the Father and God the Son were apparently painted a light pink, with their lips coloured red. This paint must have been applied thinly, for otherwise the very low-relief carving of details such as the wrinkles around Christ's eyes would have been obscured. God the Father had clear blue eyes, with irises incised into the stone, almost in the manner of a drawing, while traces of dark blue pigment remain at the corner of the Father's eyes to enhance the effects of three-dimensional light and shadow. The crown on the head of God the Father was rendered in gold with flashes of red, and there are traces of some sort of pattern in thin black lines. His robes were again a strong red, with gilt edging over a yellow-ochre preparatory ground. The same ground was used for the beard and hair of God the Father and God the Son, and for the loincloth, which were then gilded. Christ's cross was coloured a dark green, decorated with gesso nodules to give an impression of supernatural light around the body, and red blood was painted flowing from Christ's palms.
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No remains of a dove or a peg for its attachment was found in the small hole a little off-centre towards the top of the cross, which must surely have been intended for this purpose. There are four other Trinities in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum with similar holes. (15) One other Trinity in the Victoria and Albert Museum, carved c. 1500-20, still has a wooden plug stuck in its dowel hole (figs 4 and 5). (16)
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Why, then, are so many doves representing the Holy Spirit missing from Trinity alabasters? A likely explanation can be found through a study of the actual methods employed by the alabastermen as they responded to a dramatically increased demand for their work, when a market opened up for affordable alabaster works of art in the last two decades of the fourteenth century. Being small and a fairly troublesome shape, it may have been easier and faster to carve the doves from a separate piece of alabaster, rather than sculpt laboriously around the back of the bird's body, wings and tail, and risk damage to the fragile stone. These independent pieces would then have been inserted with a wooden dowel.
Cost-effectiveness drove alabaster production in medieval England and the method of fixing doves by a plug was simple and cheap but ultimately ineffective. Once the wood of the dowel began to shrink, and thus loosen in its hole, the dove would fall out. The period saw the English alabaster industry shift from a reactive response to high-cost commissions to the proactive manufacture of images based on stock themes, using production-line methods. The fifteenth century has traditionally been regarded as one of wholesale decline in the standards of carving. (17) While the overall quality of craftsmanship did decline from about 1400, this has to be seen in the context of greatly increased output: there were simply more pieces being made than before, most of which were not of the same calibre as those made during the preceding century. And yet high-quality alabaster sculptures, such as the figure of St Michael (fig. 6), continued to be produced throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the zenith of the alabaster export industry. If many carvings manufactured during the same period are in comparison poorly finished, this is not due to a decline in ability on the part of the artists. Rather, it is because cheap sculptures were now being assembled, along with more expensive pieces, for a society hungry for religious imagery that it could afford.
English alabaster-carvers were competent artists catering for customers not prepared to spend very much, often only a pound or a few shillings. (18) To meet this demand for low-cost art, sculptors experimented with new methods aimed at saving time and money. (19) Some of these were ingenious and innovative, such as their tricks to give their work an impression of richness and quality, by, for example, whitening the alabaster, which is often streaked or mottled with rusty brown hues from iron oxides. (20) That doves should have been attached by so insubstantial and rudimentary a means as a short wooden peg speaks volumes about the cost-efficient working practices of the alabaster workshops at the height of their commercial activity. That is to say, it was this profitable period of near mass-production of alabaster images, and the techniques it entailed, that was the cause of the loss of Holy Spirit doves, not angry Wycliffistae bent on destroying idolatrous sculptures. If anyone is to blame, it is the canny English alabastermen, and their keen business-sense.
That said, while symptomatic of the workmanlike methods of the alabasterers in general during the 1400s and early 1500s, it is interesting that this practice of joining a separate piece of alabaster to a carving of the same material appears to be unique to Trinity images. (21) Working practices cannot, however, explain the disappearance of all Holy Spirit doves, since there are also Trinities where the dove has been sculpted from the same piece of alabaster as the rest of the object. Integral doves were, however, vulnerable to breakage, and are also often missing or damaged (figs 7 and 8). This is because alabaster is fragile, being soft and much easier to work than marble, the chief reason for its popularity among craftsmen--it can be scratched with a finger when freshly dug from the earth. In the case of the Trinity we have already discussed (fig. 1), it is not only the dove that is missing but a whole area of the upper-front portion of the figure has suffered damage too. Both God the Father's hands and the top of Christ's cross have also been lost, perhaps in the same accident, and then repaired, and then lost again. (22)
On some Trinities we find no evidence of there ever having been a representation of the Holy Spirit. It has been suggested that a dove would originally have been painted onto the surface of the alabaster, (23) since this would have saved further carving hours. It is undeniably odd, however, that one-third of the Trinity should have been reduced to flat paintwork, when the other two-thirds were sculpted in high relief. Paint was usually employed in a support role to the alabasterer's work, namely to pick out small details and to enhance sculpted features, as opposed to actually depicting three-dimensional objects, people or animals important to the subject of the image. In short, paint usually supplemented the modelling rather than adding significantly to it on an equal basis.
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It seems unlikely that the Holy Spirit should have been omitted altogether, since English alabaster Trinities are visual statements of the tripartite nature of God. In Spanish art, on the other hand, it was common for the dove to be omitted in depictions of the Trinity. Instead the Trinity was often shown as three identical Christ-like faces joined together. (24) In these statues and paintings the Holy Spirit is not omitted, but present as one of the three faces of God in the Trinity. There remains, however, a further possibility--that perhaps these English carvings are not representations of the Trinity at all.
W. L. Hildburgh, developing a question posed by A. N. Didron, (25) put forward the hypothesis that a significant number of alabasters deemed to be of the Trinity may instead be depictions of a more general message of God presenting his son, Jesus Christ, to the world as a redemptive sacrifice for the sins of mankind. (26) For Hildburgh, the only true Trinities are those with integral doves. He saw no reason to believe that carving doves separately would have saved time or effort. (27) Arguing that the dove-holes are often inconveniently small and ill-placed, Hildburgh argued that those 'Trinities' with doves attached by a dowel are crude later conversions, made in an attempt to modify older images into Trinities.