Medieval Paintings from Castle Acre Priory

Abstract

There is no need for me here to stress the extraordinary scarcity of surviving panel pictures of undoubted English origin dating from the fourteenth century, in spite of the fact that at the time they must have been produced in enormous quantities. All the greater is, in consequence, the importance which attaches to the notable examples which I have the honour of exhibiting and commenting upon to-night; and that I am able to do so is due, in the first instance, to the privilege extended to me by the owner of the panels, the Earl of Leicester, G.C.V.O., C.M.G., and H.M. Office of Works; while I owe a further and special debt of gratitude to Mr. F. J. E. Raby, C.B., F.S.A., through whose initiative my attention was first drawn to these panels.The pictures in question (pl. xxix) have come down to us in very fragmentary condition, and are painted on thick boards, three in number, two of which join up satisfactorily enough for us to deduce that they originally formed part of one and the same composition, while the remaining panel, though evidently a unit belonging to the identical scheme, does not link up with the others. All three boards come from Castle Acre Priory, and were discovered there in recent years, though not all at the same time: the panel on the left of the two belonging together on 19th November 1930, and the two other boards on 25th August 1932. The room in which they were found was the outer parlour, underneath the prior's chapel, in the western range of the buildings: they were used as part of the panelling of the wall when this portion of the buildings was occupied as a dwelling-house. The painted side, in each case, was uppermost, clearly indicating that they had been discarded as decorative panels and re-used for structural purposes. The panel found in 1930 was built into the twelfth-century door in the west wall, and the two other boards into the window-head in the north wall.