Thursday 15 December 2016

palimpsest

A series of religious tableaux dating to the Middle Ages in the Guild Chapel of Stratford-upon-Avon was conserved thanks to chamberlain John Shakespeare, father of the village’s most famous son, has recently been fully restored and is now available for public inspection.
In the wake of the iconoclast movement and the turmoil of the Reformation in England, such allegorical murals were ordered destroyed and replaced by, well, blank, unadorned walls in line with Puritanical customs and later painted over as styles changed, but reluctant to wipe out such ancient works of art, Shakespeare the senior directed workers to limewash the walls, preserving the originals under all those layers to be teased out later. Be sure to visit Hyperallergic at the link above to marvel at this unique gallery of images, rich in symbolism and narrative that are sure to contribute to our understanding of the medieval psyche as well as that of the Elizabethans.