A Wall-painting at Idsworth, Hants, and a Liturgical Graffito

Abstract

On the north wall of the chancel of the small chapel at Idsworth, on the borders of Hampshire and Sussex, is a fine fourteenth-century wall-painting executed in distemper in red and yellow on a white ground. The composition is divided into two broad horizontal bands by a narrow zigzag band. In the top half is a scene with huntsmen, dogs, and a wild man, and what appears to be the arrest of St. John Baptist. In the lower part is St. John Baptist put in prison and a long scene showing Salome dancing a sword-dance before Herod and Herodias (pl. I). The scene of the huntsmen and the wild man requires rather closer examination, because it is commonly and wrongly described as showing a scene from the life of St. Hubert.On the extreme left of the picture are the remains of horsemen and dogs, then there is a figure of a crowned man winding a horn with his left hand and holding in his right hand a long bow which he rests on the ground. Behind him are two men. At his feet are dogs, and in front of him to his left are three men who bend down towards an old man covered with long hair who is emerging from some bushes on all fours. The attribution of this scene to the legend of St. Hubert requires full consideration, because an examination of the lives of that saint printed in the Acta Sanctorum yields no indication of any legend bearing the remotest resemblance to this scene. There seems, moreover, to be every indication that the whole painting represents something quite different.