Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting online lecture from the Churches Conservation Trust looking at English monastic and mendicant churches before and after the Dissolution in the late 1530s. James Clark from the University of Exeter argued that the folk memory of ruined, abandoned churches post-Dissolution was not the general experience of many of them. Based on study of Cromwell’s Commissioners inventories and recent archaeological evidence he looked at how the churches were still being reconfigured, redecorated and commissioning new art works and furnishing right up to the date their monasteries were dissolved. He then discussed how many of the churches were reused after with some like Canterbury and Westminster Abbeys becoming cathedrals whereas some become parish churches. Some Abbeys were also reoccupied after a hiatus such as Tewkesbury and St Albans. The talk was enlivened with good illustrations and was an interesting contrast to various talks I have done recently on 16th century art on the con...

Fascinating exhibition at Tate Britain looking at occasions in English history where art has been destroyed whether for religious, political or aesthetic reasons. The religious section was probably the most detailed and looked three distinct periods, the Dissolution of the monasteries, the reformation under Edward VI and the Civil War. We think of the Dissolution as a destructive phase by actually Henry tended to just remove things that would make him money. It wasn’t until later that we see the wholesale destruction of images because of religious ideology. These displays showed just how much Britain had lost at this time. I think most countries had an artistic golden age, or maybe more than one, and I suspect the late medieval period was one of Britain’s yet we largely ignore it because so little is left. I loved the fragments form the screen at Winchester which were so crisp because they’d been buried rather than weathering, it gave a wonderful view of what the world mus...