English Panel Paintings 1400-1558

The art of East Anglia was pre-eminent during the late thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth century. Wooden screens with painted panels were one of the most essential fittings of late pre-Reformation churches, serving both to protect the high altar and to define the division between the chancel and the nave and aisles. Whereas very few screens dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries survive, the surviving fifteenth-century rood-screen paintings in East Anglia form the largest body of late mediaeval painting to be found in England. Details of more than a thousand panels from more than one hundred screens are listed, described and in many cases illustrated in this volume accompanied by commentaries on their design, techniques and materials used in their making and how they were paid for. Contents:
Chapter I Surviving rood-screen paintings; Part I: Early screens Part II: The Ranworth Group Part III: Paintings connected with Ranworth Part IV: Cawston Part V: Paintings on parchment or paper Part VI: Foreign influences and landscape backgrounds.
Chapter II The iconography of rood-screen paintings; Part I: The popularity of the saints in the late Middle Ages; Part II: The godhead, the Virgin and the Life of Christ Part III: Figures which form part of a series Part IV: Individual saints.
Chapter III The making and decoration of rood-screens; Part I: Bequests and contracts Part II: Timber and construction by Joe Dawes Part III: Painting techniques and materials expanded and updated by Pauline Plummer Part IV: Past destructive treatments and conservation.
Appendix I Gazetteer of churches.
Appendix II Donors of screens where paintings have survived.
Appendix III List of saints (including prophets and kings), their emblems, where they are to be seen and the causes for which they are invoked.