Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/231

Rh as in a flood, permission to carry out of the realm three great alabaster images, representing the Virgin Mary, St. Peter, and St. Paul, and a small image of the Holy Trinity, without any payment of duties for them. The license included a large quantity of household utensils, tapestries for presentation to the pope, cloths and garments of English manufacture.

The statue of gilt brass, representing Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, who died A.D. 1439, in the chapel founded by him, at Warwick, is another fine specimen of the fifteenth century. The name of the artists, Bartholomew Lambespring and William Austen, employed on this work, have been recorded. There exist many other works of great merit, which the limits of this paper will not allow me to notice.

I now approach the last period of medieval art in England, in which the florid style of architecture, then adopted, demanded all the powers of the artist, and of the sculptor more especially, to contribute to the exuberance of embellishment displayed at that time in religious edifices.

We owe the most splendid monument of that period, in England, the Chapel of Henry VII., rather to the fears of that prince, than to his taste or feeling towards the Arts. Happily that edifice was projected at a moment, the most favourable to the development of genius; England, speaking generally, had, it is true, profited little by the extraordinary revolution in Art, then progressing towards maturity under the auspices of the Medici, and other princes of Italy, by the efforts of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo, yet the vast increase of artists of every description, encouraged by more extensive employment for their skill, had occasioned emigrations to Germany and the north of Europe; and we may reasonably suppose that many, at the period of the construction of Henry the Seventh's chapel, had found employment in England, and become associated with our own artists. The Flemish artists, in one class of workmanship, at this period, during the times of Pius III. and Julius II., equalled, if they did not surpass the Italians, in the execution of dies, for striking medals, or of matrices of seals.

Mr. Britton, to whom we are, perhaps, more indebted for archæological information, than to any person in this kingdom,