Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/687

Rh WOOD-CAB VING 647 roofs, which in the 15th century in England reached so high a pitch of splendour. The development of archi tectural wood-carving was much slower than that of sculpture in stone. During the &quot; Early English &quot; period wood-work was rather heavy in style and coarse in detail ; in &quot; Decorated &quot; times wood-work of much beauty and richness was produced, but forms more suitable to stone were still used, and it was not till the later &quot; Perpendi cular&quot; period in the 15th century that the wood-carvers of England learnt to perfectly adapt their designs to the nature of their material. Very beautiful roofs, for example, were produced in the 14th century, such as that at Adder- bury, 1 but the principals are frequently constructed with large arched braces, richly moulded and very graceful in effect but constructioually weak, and very wasteful of the material. Enormous balks of oak were required to enable the large curves of the braces to be cut out of the solid. The builders of the 15th century corrected these defects, and designed their sumptuous screens, stall-canopies, and open roofs with straight lines for the leading framework, only using curves on a smaller scale, and in places where much strain does not fall upon them. Nothing can exceed the beauty, in its own class, of the 15th and early 16th century wood-work in England ; the many fine examples that still exist give us some notion of the wealth of the country in this branch of art at a time when every church was obliged by canon law to have its rood-screen, and almost always also possessed carved oak stalls and many other fittings, such as statues and retables, in the same material. 2 The rich oak work of England was no exception to the universal application of coloured decoration, and nearly every screen, roof, or choir-stall was covered with minute painting in gold and colours. The modern notion that oak should be left unpainted was quite unknown to our mediaeval forefathers ; and they, as a rule, preferred even a simple coating of white, red, or other colour to the natural tint of the oak, which would have looked very dull and heavy in tone when surrounded by the polychro matic brilliance of the floor, the walls, and the windows. In most cases, however, the wood-work was not left with its uniform ground of paint ; delicate and graceful patterns of diapers or sprigs of foliage were added on to all the main lines of the work, and covered the chief members of all the mouldings, in exactly the same way as Avas done with the sculpture in stone. Many of the Norfolk screens still have much of their painted orna ment in good preservation 3 ; and additional richness was gained by the groundwork of delicately moulded stucco with which the whole surface of the wood was covered before the colouring and gilding were applied. Modern &quot; restorers &quot; have in most cases scraped off all that remained of this brilliant decoration, and frequently no signs are now visible of this universal system of decora tion. The very rich and graceful &quot; watching gallery &quot; 4 in the abbey church of St Albans is now bare of any colouring, though it was once a very brilliant example of polychromatic decoration. Great richness of carving is lavished on the church roofs especially of Norfolk and Suffolk. Carved bosses cover the intersections of the moulded timbers, some with 1 The roof of Westminster Hall, of the early part of the 15th cen tury, is in size and richness of detail the most magnificent open timber roof in the world ; it has curved braces of very wide span, cut out of enormous balks of oak or chestnut. 2 It should be noted that in Old English the word &quot; picture&quot; was often used for a statue or a relief, partly no doubt from the fact that all sculpture Avas decorated with painting. 3 See Talbot Bury, Ecclesiastical Wood-Work, London, 1847. 1 So called because from it a guardian used constantly to watch, day and night, the great gold shrine of St Albau, with its treasure of precious offerings all round it. bunches of delicate foliage, others carved into figures of angels with outspread wings. Other statuettes of angels often cover the ends of the hammer-beams, and the whole cornice frequently has running foliage inserted in a hollow of the moulding. All this wood-carving is usually of very high artistic merit, and combines delicacy of detail with strength of decorative effect in a way that has never been surpassed by the mediaeval artists of any country of the Continent. These magnificent roofs, which are peculiar to England, and even to certain districts such as East Anglia, are among the most perfect artistic productions of the Middle Ages. 5 Norfolk, Suffolk, Devonshire, and other counties are still rich in elaborate chancel screens, carved with delicate foliage, especially in the hollows of the cornice, and light open cresting or &quot; brattishing &quot; along the top. The tracery which fills in the upper part of these screens is of wonder ful beauty, and executed with the most minute finish and delicate moulding. The ends of the 15th-century stalls were often richly decorated with carving, and are crowned with finials or &quot; poppy-heads &quot; of the most elaborate and spirited design. The underside of the &quot; misericords &quot; of the monastic stalls were specially selected for minute en richment, in spite of their very inconspicuous position. The utmost wealth of fancy and minuteness of workmanship is often lavished upon these, and their reliefs are frequently works of art of a very high order. In some cases the carver took his design from contemporary engravings by some distinguished German or Flemish artist, such as Schongauer or Albert Diirer. One of these in the chapel of Henry VII. at Westminster, representing &quot; The Golden Age,&quot; is a work of wonderful beauty and delicacy of touch. Genre and satirical subjects are often selected : the regulars are made fun of in the churches of the secular clergy, and the vices of the secular priests are satirized on the stalls of the monastic churches. This satire is often carried to the verge of indecency, especially in the scenes frequently selected by clerical carvers to set forth the miseries, of the married state. In England during the 16th and 17th centuries little wood-carving of much merit was produced ; the oak panelling, furniture, and other fittings of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods were largely enriched with surface reliefs, coarse in execution, but often decorative in effect, and chiefly remarkable for their showy appearance pro duced with the minimum of labour, 7 a great contrast to the rich detail and exquisite finish of the pre-Eeformation work. Towards the end of the 17th century a very realistic style of wood-carving came into use, in which great technical skill was displayed but little real artistic feeling. Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) and his pupils produced the most elaborate works of this class, such as wreaths, scrolls, and friezes carved in high relief, or in the round, with fruit and flowers, modelled and carved with wonderful imitative skill, but weak in true decorative effect. These clever groups of foliage and fruit were carved in pear or lime wood, and fastened on to the surface of wall-panels, mantelpieces, and other wooden fittings. The stalls and screens in St Paul s Cathedral are some of Gibbons s best works, and a great deal of his realistic carving still exists at Oxford in Trinity College, at Trinity College, Cambridge, at Chatsworth, at Petworth, and in many of the great country houses of that time. Since then wood-carving has not taken an important position among the lesser arts of the country. 6 A number of fine examples are well illustrated by Brandon, Open Timber Hoofs, London, 1856. B Often wrongly called &quot; misereres.&quot; 7 See Sanders, Woodwork of the 16th and 17th Centuries, London, 1883 ; and Small, Scottish Wood- Work of the 16th and 17th Centuries, Edinburgh, 1878.