Some Presumably Datable Fragments of an English Alabaster Retable, and some Assembled Notes on English Alabaster Carvings in Spain

Abstract

In view of the very number—possibly more than three thousand—of English alabaster devotional (as distinct from those made as parts of monuments) carvings which have survived, it is somewhat astonishing how extraordinarily small a proportion of them have hitherto been datable otherwise than on intrinsic grounds. We have, indeed, many references to such carvings in dated or datable documents, but in extremely few cases have we been able to identify the particular objects with which those references are concerned. So far as I know, the only ones which have as yet been connected definitely with a dated document are the ones in the reredos, depicting events in the story of St. James, preserved intact in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Almost invariably an English alabaster carving is datable only within somewhat wide limits, the criteria most usually applied being those laid down ’provisionally’ (but now commonly accepted as practically correct) by Prof. Prior nearly thirty years ago, and in accordance with the inherent characters of the sculpture and the applied coloration. Any discovery of data relating to a particular alabaster carving is, consequently, of considerable moment to us, not merely in relation with the object with which the data are immediately concerned, but much more importantly as giving us means for dating other similar carvings more accurately than within Prior's provisional ‘Periods’ (even though modified by the general terms ‘early’ and ‘late’) of about forty years each. In the case of the Santiago retable there can be no doubt at all as to the direct connexion between it and the existing document relating to it; in the case of the present fragments there is, unfortunately, in the only records I have found associated with them, an element of uncertainty, although there appears to be a very strong presumption that the medieval record to which I shall refer relates to the altar whose retable those fragments adorned.