The Art of the Tomb
Elizabeth Linscott describes how English churches and cathedrals, from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, abound in memorial effigies to the distinguished dead.
Ruskin once said that having an effigy was ‘being laid dead with dignity’; and during the Middle Ages, from the close of the twelfth century onwards, figures of the deceased, called ‘images’ or ‘counterfeits’, were often placed on their tombs. Some were destroyed by Cromwell’s soldiers, others by the Great Fire; but at the last count, fifty-six years ago, two thousand sepulchral statues still remained in English churches and cathedrals.
The interior of a medieval church was brightly painted; and many of these figures show touches of their original colouring. But most of it has long since vanished. What remain are delicate details of sculpture—beautiful sprigs of foliage, the pleats and buttons of a garment, the modelling of a hand, the rivet of a suit of armour and, here and there, a lady’s smile.
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