A Nice Commission

Last summer, I got a commission from St Dominic's Church in Washington DC, to carve the Four Evangelist symbols for the reredos in the church. Of course I was delighted, since this is "right up my alley", when it comes to medieval art. This gave me an opportunity to make something in the medieval style which as regular followers will know, is my true passion. As a starting point, I chose an 11th century image for St Mark, the lion, which is part of a silver and jeweled book cover. I then designed the other three characters to follow the same format, relying on other 10th and 11th century work to guide me. Father Schommer, of the church, allowed me complete freedom in my design. Our only discussion was that they would be gilded and have the backgrounds painted in. Of course, the size was determined by the placement of the roundels.

What follows are some pictures of the project as it unfolded.

I started with St Mark, as I had an image from a 11thc book cover

 

 

 The lion is also my sign, so I have a special affinity towards it

Nearly finished

The source of inspiration

One down, three to go.

St Luke follows Marc in the order

The carving well under way

And finished

Next was St John

This was my primary source of inspiration 10thc Ivory

 

One challenge to the design for St John was following the same format with one appendage holding the end of the scroll and another holding down the other end, but leaving some space. Anatomically, it did not work for his other foot to be in a similar position to what Mark and Luke had, so I came up with the idea of the wing tip holding down the other end; it works.

St Mathew, working out the design

 

 

The design for Mathew held even more challenges. I had thought that I would just follow another St Mathew that I had carved many years ago, but that did not work because his hands could not hold the scroll.

 

St Mathew and his symbol, Unfinished carving from 1998

 

 

I wanted to have him holding the scroll stretched out between his hands, but that left his centre open and did not work, also it did not have the feel of 10th or 11th century art to it. I finally thought of having one hand hold one end, and the other end "held" in his wing. It works, so I went with it.

 

 

this one needed a new plank of timber, as the other one was full

finished carving and ready for cutting out

the other three, all together and ready to cut out as well

After cutting them all out, which I never took a picture of, the next step was to prepare them all for gilding. This is done with several layers of gesso and red bole

 

Scraping the bole on St Johan

 

 

To give the carvings more of an authentic medieval look, I used a scraper and scraped the bole down, as opposed to sanding it. The results were much better even if it took much longer to do.

 

 

All ready for gilding

Genuine 23 karat "red gold" was used for the gilding.

Gilded, painted, lettered and ready to go

So small one can hardly see them, but they add a nice touch

Close-up of the left side

Close-up of the right side

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Learning To Paint (Again)

 I n previous posts I have introduced my "Millennium Box". In the beginning it was not so named because I had expected it to take that long to finish, but because it is supposed to be patterned after the art of the "turn of the millennium", as in circa 990-1010 AD. My first post, after completing the construction of that box was 12 November, 2017; an unbelievable quick three years ago. 

"Turn of the Millennium" 10th century box,
front detail

I have always been an artist, and have been painting since I was 12, but I had to learn to paint all over again to work on this box. My intent, from the conception more than three years ago, was to crate an expensive painted medieval box, and I had even worked out the theme, some of the designs, and had begun to purchase authentic pigments for executing the plan. The idea was to not only paint it with art inspired from late 10th/early 11th century manuscripts, but to do it with egg tempera, one of a few different options available to a turn-of-the-millennium artist. 

The box with a new coat of gesso. The top has been
scraped smooth but the sides are still unfinished. I used
a cabinet scraper for the flat areas and a file to trim up the 
rim of the box and give tiny chamfers to the corners.

There were several factors that caused the process to take three years, one of them being that after I finished making the box, I covered it in gesso and then left the country for six months to work on a job. When I returned to my workshop, I found the gesso on the top had cracked. Somehow, the fabric that I had put on the box prior to the gesso, (as per Theopholis' instructions) had not adhered well, and it seems that there was also a bit too much glue in the mix. Whatever the cause, I had to remove everything from the top and do it over. I had also made some "gesso sotile" following the instructions of Cennini, and that was put over everything and scraped down after I had repaired the top.

The second, and even more fundamental reason for the delay, was that I had to mentally get myself ready to do the painting. I had never made or worked with egg tempera before, and there are so many factors that come into play that made it a bit daunting to commence. Once I finally spent enough money accumulating pigments, and had read, ad nauseum, the medieval treatise available to me on the subject, it was actually time to stop baulking and get to work. 

BNF Lat. 9448 fol 54v and 73r ca. 990-95 (cropped)

As I mentioned, my idea was to make a box with a theme, specifically my own zodiac sign of Leo. I also wanted to incorporate the Sol and Luna (sun and moon), which was a popular, oft repeated theme, in medieval art. As with medieval artists, I would chose my subject mater from the images available to me, and adapt them as my artistic skill and inspiration allowed, to come up the with figures to fit my intended theme. I had seen several examples of the sun and moon personified as king and queen, but all of them were only bust or half length figures. I wanted full figure seated persons, and so adapted figures which were originally other characters. These images came from a manuscript produced in Prum Abbey (Northern Germany) around 990-95 and are now housed in the BNF. (French national library) My second source comes from a manuscript now in the Boulogne-sur-Mer branch of the French Municipal Library, which is a late tenth century copy of a 9th century copy of a now lost, but probably Roman original. The extant 9th century copy is known as the Leiden Aratea. There are scores of surviving medieval manuscripts which point back to this model. 

Some of my drawings for the design of the box. Changes 
and adaptations were made as I went along, but this was 
a starting point. Nearly all peripheral decorative elements for
the box were taken from the Prum Abbey manuscript. 

One must always bear in mind, when it comes to art, that an artist needs images to work from, and he will make the best he can with those he has access to. A well paid and traveled artist would be able to visit many libraries and source an abundance of imagery, but a less-well-off artist would have been more limited, and thus need to rely more on his imagination; the resulting work would probably be viewed by modern eyes as more "crude" or "primitive" looking. There are hundreds of examples of medieval art which clearly show that one artist had access to another work, or indirect copies thereof. 

For my box, my imaginary medieval alter-ego had direct access to both of these primary sources; his own artistic ability took those models and made an original work of art to suit his patron's requirements, as was the practice of every medieval craftsman. One cannot begin to stress enough, the difference in the creative process that would have existed in a world without the photographs, printed images, and magazines, not to mention all of the digital media, that we now take so much for granted. Copying was not seen as a sin, but as an essential element for creativity. Everything that we have, owes its existence to all that came before.

Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale,
MS 0188 Fol 32v sp. 10jh (cropped)
Sadly, the 9th century version of this image has been lost,
it would be interesting to see what changes had been made by
the 10th century replicating artist.

Having gotten all of my images together and planned out, I was still not quite mentally ready to tackle the job, so I decided to ease myself into it by painting the inside of the lid. Most boxes of this calibre would have had cloth linings, but I reasoned, that it would be difficult to line the lid, given all of its angles, with a piece of fabric, and if I did so, the pattern on the fabric would necessarily have been almost completely obliterated, thus it would make more sense to paint simulated fabric where the pattern could be "bent" to give the illusion of following the contour of the lid but maintaining a discernible design. My pattern is a combination of two ornamental garment designs found in the Prum manuscript. 

The extent of the "practice" that I did prior to beginning the lid

This illustrates most of the process of egg tempera.
The dry pigment is "ground" with water to give it a "paint"
consistency, the colour is then transferred to an authentic
medieval "paint cup" (shell) and mixed with egg yolk,
 itself  tempered with water and vinegar.

As in my model manuscript, most design elements were not
drawn out beforehand. The artist just started out and whatever
happened is what it was. This, in my opinion, lends
to what I see as the natural beauty of medieval art. Not 
over-thinking and over-planning. The results look more
spontaneous and natural. They are perfect in their
imperfection 

A "red" colour, and the components used to achieve it. 
On the green background it looks much more like red

One of the challenges that reared it head almost immediately was getting the desired colours from the dry pigments. As soon as water is added, the colour changes. The relative colour also seems very different on a white box than it does on my black granite grinding slab. Most of my painting career has been in oil, and I have always had a white or light wood-coloured (maple) background on which to mix it. The medieval manuscripts on painting recommend a "porphyry" slab for grinding the colours. Porphyry is rather purplish red with white spots, and though light, is certainly not white either. I did not have any porphyry in the first place, but this granite slab seemed a good substitute. Learning to judge the finished colour on a black background took a lot of "trial and error", (mostly error) however.

The finished inside of the lid

Even the border decoration was painted without prior drawing. I did put a dot of white paint at the point where each curve reached the edge and then started connecting the dots. Somehow I got one more repeat of the pattern on the lower edge than what I had on the upper.

After finishing the inside I was finally ready
to take on the outside. I began at one end and
painted the border to completion. 

I then realised that I should be painting everything in stages as I went, colour by colour. This would serve two purposes, first, the whole box would be more harmoniously decorated, and second, I would not have to be constantly re-mixing the same colours.

With that Idea in mind, I began the entire box as a single
unit.

One problem with that plan, however, was that I had never finalised the design of Sol and Luna for the front of the box. I had to stop and do that. Once they were drawn, however, I spent more time working on the front at the neglect of other panels, so the idea of mixing each colour only once did not really work out very well.

Starting to show some real progress

At this point, I felt a sense of actually "getting it"

One frustration that I encountered was in attempting to replicate the colour purple. I had purchased two different "purple ochres", but neither one of them came close to the purple of my Prum Abbey model. I also had purchased several "reds" and "blues" which were supposedly what "was available" to a 10th century European artist, but no amount of mixing of any of them came close to achieving the desired colour. In the end, I had to do as any other medieval artist would have done, and content myself with what I had to hand. The bold use of purple in this 10th century manuscript is almost taunting however, and it seems, in looking through the entire volume, as if the artists (there were at least 4 working on this) after having gotten hold of some purple, were able to refine its colour to greater advantage as they went on, and made more flamboyant use of, and greater glee of having gotten hold of it. I would really love to know what their source of pigment was!

A brilliant "true" purple from the Prum Manuscript
By comparison, my purples are hardly purple at all

At this point I am more than two weeks into the process,
Using every minute that I can carve out for the purpose

The next big transformation
came when I began adding
details

The details were fun and why I so loved this particular
manuscript in the first place.
Painting parts of a single pattern in different colours was
"a thing" in 9th, 10th and 11th century art.

The end where I began wound up being the
last to be finished. The horses were a bit
mentally daunting for some reason. 

Sol in his Quadriga rides across
the sky, bringing light to the world
Krebs, or Cancer, is on the left lid end as he is
the sign before Leo.

Abstract stars and clouds in a night sky for the back panel

Textile inspired designs make up the back, as was a very 
common practice with medieval Chests, boxes &c.

Luna lumbers across the night sky in her ox-cart. 
Virgo, holding Libra, a common means of depicting
both signs together follows Leo as the year advances.

After some 80+ hours of work over a period of one month,
The box is finally finished.

After putting away all my pigments, and cleaning up and stowing all of my equipment, I realised that I had forgotten to paint in the scepter which was supposed to be in Sol's hand. I just did that this morning as can be seen in the first picture at the top.

Finished, including the 23K gold-leaf accents, but not without
the scepter - This would never due.

In all, this has been an educational, interesting, and fun project. If I could do it again, I would make some changes, but I feel fairly happy with it. Most important, however, is that it achieves its original goal of demonstrating the possibilities and potential beauty of the millions of lost objects from the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages. We have many examples from the 14th and 15th century, but these hardly reflect an entire millennium of artwork, nor do they illustrate the complexity and skills which early artisans had in the so-called heart of the "dark ages"! This box, then, is a slight attempt at demonstrating that reality. 

Still to come will be a set of cast bronze feet to stand on, a lock to secure the contents, and a ring-handle by which to lift or carry it. I wonder how long it will be before that part is finished...

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Wooden Treasures

As regular readers will be aware, this past summer I took a trip to Europe to do a lot of picture taking. My trip was a sort of "pilgrimage" because I wanted to visit some places that I knew to have medieval treasures of the wooden variety, which I have been wishing to see first-hand.

One place, very high up on my list, was Sankt Maria Im Kapitol, which is one of the 11 Romanesque churches still extant in the city of Köln, Germany. I went there for the specific purpose of seeing, with my own eyes, a magnificent pair of doors which were carved, painted and installed about ten years prior to the Norman conquest of England, which, for many people of the English speaking world, has become one of the key points of reckoning in the history of the Middle Ages. (That event occurred in 1066.)

No tourist will probably ever get to take a picture of
these doors like this because they are sequestered behind
a very heavy iron gate, All the pictures you can get are
by putting the camera lens through the bars. This picture
came from a website of the City of Köln.

Chance is an interesting character and what he leaves behind or takes away in the course of history is a mystery beyond comprehension. Such is the case with this pair of doors which is still in a rather remarkable state of preservation, especially given their age. I have seen doors made in the 18th and 19th centuries in far worse condition than these. Part of the miracle of their preservation is due to the fact that in the 12th century (some hundred years after they were installed, in other words) a porch was built at the entrance where they were hung, and thus the elements did not touch them so severely as they would have, had the doors remained exposed. However, back to the topic of fate and chance, on the opposite side of the church is an identical entrance, which also had an identical porch built at the same time. Obviously it would also have had a pair of doors in its entrance, but there remains no trace of that pair, nor any record of them. ( Nor for that matter, of the two sets of doors which would have been installed in the main entrances.) One can only guess as to their appearance, but it is not a big stretch to imagine them as being similarly carved with depictions from the Old testament, as this was a favourite programme of ornamentation.

The German Wikipedia has a very interesting article on these doors and I will give a few summarising tidbits here for the English speaking audience. As I already mentioned, they were made just after 1050, and were known to already be in place circa the year 1060. Amazingly, they remained in continuous use until 1932. Although they were in a secondary side portal of the church, for quite some time in their history, due to practical reasons related to the monastery architecture surrounding the church, they served as the primary entrance. (This fact also poses the question of what the main doors were like, as main entrance doors were usually made superior in quality and decoration to side doors. Perhaps they were made of bronze and suffered the same fate as countless scores of other such doors; appropriated for their metal content to be used in some infernal war.) 

Top half of the right-hand leaf

The doors stand an impressive 485cm high, which is to say nearly 5 metres, and have a combined width of 2 and 1/2 metres. (the main entry doorways are nearly double that width) Each door "leaf" is made of an heavy oak base of three parallel planks over which are attached the panels and frames of carved and painted walnut. Each panel is surrounded by three separate carved borders and a flat panel which has painted on script, notating the events portrayed on their respective panels. To assist in keeping all the moulded pieces in place, large carved knobs are attached with heavy ornamental nails at the corner of each panel. It was my observation that no two of the surviving knobs has the same design as any other.

Each leaf of the door is divided into 13 panels of three different sizes, this gave a pleasant sense of rhythm and balance to the overall unit. At the top, the centre and near the bottom are three larger horizontal panels, the two upper ones each have four smaller, nearly square panels below them, whilst the lowest horizontal members have two vertical rectangles under. Each panel has a composition of one or more scenes related to the life of Christ. The whole door is reputed to be the best preserved sculptural depiction of that subject from the 11th century, in the whole of Europe. It is also one of a very limited number of medieval sculpted wooden doors still in existence, but is far from the oldest, as there is, in St Sabina, in Italy, a pair of carved wooden doors from the 5th century (which is actually a bit of a stretch to include as "medieval" since that period technically begins some 67 years after those doors were made. However, there is no reason to think that the construction of doors would have had any drastic shift in such a short period of time, and thus can be counted as an example of that art at the dawn of the Middle Ages.)

Detail showing the three carved borders to each
panel along with the flat border with the painted
script and the heavily carved framing for the
doors

There is, apparently, some discussion among scholars as to whether the doors were made by one or more artists, and there is some allusion in the article to a point which I like to bring up whenever I get the chance; which is that although this may be the only surviving work from that artist or group of artists, it represents an entire career, of one or several individuals, and bears testament to the quality of work which they were producing. I should also point out that since no one simply woke up one morning and began carving, it further bears witness to one or more masters and all of the work that they would have produced in the span of their own career(s). When we contemplate this, we begin to realise the vast quantity of what has been lost to time, and the amount and quality of ornament that originally existed. In order for craftsmen to have a career, they obviously need to have enough work to keep them employed in that field. 

First picture; one of only two depictions of furniture from the right-hand door.
Second picture two chairs in one scene from the left-hand door. Notice that
the second artist took more care to show more of the forms of the furniture.

One of the reasons given for the opinion that at least two different artists worked on the doors is because the figures on the left-hand panels are a bit more stiff and linear in form than those on the right panels. Another discrepancy pointed out, is the fact the the three horizontal left-hand panels have, each, two scenes, whilst the matching right-hand panels only have one. My own observation to add to this, is that the left-hand panels seem to give more attention to details of furniture in the scenes and there are far more such objects depicted. (on the right-hand door there is only one table and one bench) whilst the left-had leaf has a bed, several chairs, a table, and an altar.

The second piece of furniture depicted on the right-hand side, but this is a very
rare example of a table that actually has leg. For some reason it was a fad for
several hundred years to depict tables that seemed to float in space. This is a
great example to counter most people's notion of planks of wood placed on
trestles as the primary form of a medieval table. 

In Wikipedia, there is a comparison of this door to the so-called Bernwardstür  a surviving early (ca 1015) 11th  century bronze door, but to me, this comparison is another reminder of just how few medieval artifacts still remain. Frankly, the wooden doors we are discussing are "like" the bronzes as much a tulip is "like" a rose. There simply are no other tulips to compare it with. In my opinion, they are much more in keeping with the Magdeburg Doors of about 100 years later, but again, that comparison is more of the overall look of the doors, with their sculpted borders and round corner knobs to each panel, than in the general style of the carvings, all three of which are not particularly "like" any of the others and bear witness to three distinct "schools" of sculptural style. Basically, if you are in a dessert full of cacti and brambles, it will be very tempting to draw comparison with the only three very different flowers that you happen to find even if they are not botanically related at all. (by clicking the live links you can view those doors for yourself)

A very quaint bit of well preserved painted decoration. This tells me that the
"Folk Art" paintings of so much 18th and 19th century work was but a
continuation of centuries old painted ornament

For me, there are two very important points to consider about these doors, first, as another German language Wikipedia article points out, it was almost always, prior to the 15th century, "mandatory" for carved wooden objects to be painted (or gilded, or both), and these doors have enough of their original paint left to give us a glimpse of how they would have appeared when new. There is no gold left on them, but if one compares these doors to the illuminated art of the same time period, he will quickly realise that the pale yellow colour in the background of all of the scenes was originally the yellow bole used in the gilding process. These doors would have been gleaming with red, yellow, blue, green, black, white and lots of gold, just as the finer illuminated manuscripts of their day. (and doubtless panel paintings, none of which have survived were.) (do not think of modern printed and plastic colours, but rather of natural earth and mineral ones.)

My personal favourite scene from these doors, but I cannot really say why,
other than that I like it. Click here to see a picture on the internet which
gives a better sense of the surviving paint.

The second point concerns what I have already mentioned about what this piece tells us regarding the state of decoration and ornament in its time. Most people think of flat heavy wooden doors with big iron straps, but this was not for important building with sufficient revenue. In medieval times people liked to spend as much or more money than they had to decorate and ornament their possessions, and architecture. This is one rare surviving example that can very emphatically point that out at the same time as it proclaims very loudly the quality and skill of the 11th century woodcarver's skills.

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