II.—English Alabaster Carvings as Records of the Medieval Religious Drama

Abstract

The idea, long since accepted, that the English alabaster-carvers of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries depicted in their reliefs things times has, I believe, not seriously been questioned. As Prior, writing in 1913, put it, ‘since the scenes [as they appeared in the carvings] were those of contemporary representation in passion-plays and mysteries, the pasteboard make-ups of the religious stage, which were on view in every great city, were at hand as models to the shop-carvers. We may take it that in table-sculpture we…find…as it were, stage soldiers and property virgins’; ‘the blackening of the faces of the ruffians and executioners and heretics, as seen in many of the tables, was no doubt a stage trick’; and ‘The feather tights on angels…have the unmistakable appearance of a stage outfit’. Émile Mâle, discussing (in 1904) the effect, on medieval art, of the religious plays, had already observed that, although les érudits had posé mille questions concerning how the mystery-plays had been staged, the answer was clearly to be seen in numberless paintings, stained-glass windows, miniatures, and altar-pieces, which ‘nous offrent sans cesse l'image exact de ce qu'on voyait au théâtre’.