Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB
[graphic]
[ocr errors]

FLEMISH BRASS AT HARROW, CO. MIDDLESEX, DISCOVERED 1859.

[graphic]

PORTION OF BRASS AT LUBECK, A.D. 1350.

The body dress of the Harrow figure may also be compared with the details of Brasses at Lübeck, which are here introduced, in order to show how entirely the style of these unquestionably foreign examples accords with the supposed Flemish Brasses in England, as well as with the subjects of this article. The conventional dragon with foliage is copied from the Brass of John Luneborch, A.D. 1464, in the Katerinenkirke; and the small dragon is part of the diapering of one in the cathedral, dated 1350.*

But the most peculiar characteristic of the foreign style is the treatment of the mouth when represented in full face. The beau

[graphic]

PORTION OF BRASS AT LUBECK, A.D. 1464.

* This brass represents bishops Burchardus de Serken and Johannes de Mül, who respectively died A.D. 1317 and 1350.

It is an unbroken surface of brass, 12 ft. long by 6 ft. wide, entirely covered with the richest work, unsurpassed in artistic design, and probably forms the most splendid specimen in existence.

tiful head of the B.V. Mary at the close of this article (p. 284) is slightly reduced from the original, which forms part of the detail of the first mentioned Brass at Lübeck, A.D. 1464; it should be compared with the principal effigy at Harrow. Some persons have supposed that the line between the lips represents the Eucharistic Wafer; but the supposition is clearly disproved by this example; it was probably no more than one of those conventionalisms which in the middle ages held art with a tight grip.

Of the marginal rows of Saints which decorated the lady's brass the figure of Saint Paul remains, and near him is a shield of arms bearing three stags tripping. Also of the legend the two letters xb. In the tracery above Saint Paul there is again a remarkable correspondence with the annexed circle, which is copied from the Lübeck brass of 1350.

It is not easy to fix the date of these remains, but they may probably be assigned to the early part of the fifteenth century. The artistic design shows them to have been executed whilst brass engraving was still in its highest development; but the style of architecture, and mode of rendering it, and also the diapering of the dress, prove them to be later than most of the foreign specimens remaining in this country, and of a period when art had been here superseded by a hard mannerism.

Some curiosity will be naturally entertained to account for the circumstance, how fragments of very splendid sepulchral memorials, which once decorated a foreign church or churches, should be converted to the commemoration of the wife of a simple English gentleman.

One peculiarity of these beautiful relics is that they are not at all worn by attrition. No careless tread has ever blunted the sharpness of their lines. One might readily imagine them to have remained unused in the workman's shop from the time when the Flemish surface was engraved until they were required at Harrow. But, as the period of a century and a half involved in such a supposition appears too great for probability, it will be more satisfactory to look to other circumstances.

[graphic]
« AnteriorContinua »