Abstract
The relationship between text and image in later medieval art is complex and has a growing literature. Wall paintings in two churches in South Wales suggest ways in which text could inspire sophisticated programmes of paintings. At Llandeilo Talybont, a sequence telling the story of the Crucifixion through the Instruments of the Passion relates to medieval devotions to the Instruments and to readings from the Holy Week liturgy. At Llancarfan, a medieval satirical poem on fashionable clothing and a verse translation of the life of St George suggest links between the wall paintings of Death and the Gallant, the Seven Deadly Sins and St George. Apparently random collections of wall paintings may therefore reflect a process of interaction between public art and public knowledge of texts.
Highlights
The relationship between word and image in later medieval art is a complex subject and fruitful for debate
It is no longer tenable to regard the visual imagery in the medieval church as libri laicorum, books for the illiterate
Athene Reiss has argued that wall paintings do not do what a book would have done: they do not present doctrine effectively, they do not tell stories coherently
Summary
It is possible that a series of texts underlies the sequence of wall paintings recently rediscovered in the church at Llancarfan in the Vale of Glamorgan (fig ). These include a massive St George and the Dragon, a Death figure dragging a fashionably-dressed young man out through a window towards the churchyard, an idiosyncratic set of the Seven Deadly Sins and a damaged set of the Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy. This is the fifteenth-century satirical poem that begins lYKe as grete wateres encresyn in to floodes fele
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