Search Results

Astrology is the art of predicting events on earth as well as human character and disposition from the movements of the planets and fixed stars. Medieval astrology encompassed both general concepts of celestial influence, and the technical art of making predictions with horoscopes, symbolic maps of the heavens at particular moments and places constructed from astronomical information. The scientific foundations of the art were developed in ancient Greece, largely lost in early medieval Europe and recovered by the Latin West from Arabic sources in the 12th and 13th centuries. Late medieval astrological images were successfully Christianized and were adapted to particular contexts, acquired local meanings and changed over time.

Astrology developed into a scientific branch of learning in ancient Greece, but because of the opposition of the Church Fathers it was transmitted to early medieval Europe in only fragmentary form in technically unsophisticated textbooks and popular divinatory genres. Literary and scientific texts provided more general ideas about the nature and attributes of the planets which were influential on later iconography. The first significant astrological images appear in 11th-century illustrated astronomical texts (e.g. London, BL, Cotton MS. Tiberius BV), which were acquired and produced by monasteries to aid with time-keeping and the construction of the Christian calendar....

(fl London, 1865–82).

English furniture designer and manufacturer. He may have been trained by the Gothic Revival architect and furniture designer J. P. Seddon, whose work certainly influenced his first published design, a davenport in a geometric Reformed Gothic style, in the Building News of 1865. That year he also advertised a ‘New Registered Reclining Chair’, made by Marsh & Jones of Leeds, whose London showrooms were near his own premises off Cavendish Square. In 1865 Marsh & Jones supplied the Yorkshire mill-owner Sir Titus Salt with a large group of furniture, including a bedroom suite, and in 1867 with the case of an Erard grand piano (all Leeds, Temple Newsam House) designed by Bevan; described at the time as ‘medieval’, the pieces are decorated with geometric marquetry ornament. Bevan designed a bookcase for the Manchester firm James Lamb, which was shown in the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867, and by the following year was also designing for ...

(b 1811; d 1887).

American furniture-maker based in New York. He was active from 1841, when he entered into a partnership, and was based in Brooklyn from the 1850s. The best-known examples of his furniture are a Gothic Revival armchair (c. 1847; New York, Met.) and an elaborately decorated cabinet (built to accommodate a set of Audubon’s ...

Monumental, marble paschal Candlestick of the late 12th to early 13th century with reliefs signed by Nicolaus de Angelo and Vassallettus now in S Paolo fuori le Mura, Rome. The imposing column (h. 5.6 m), adorned with six registers of reliefs and surmounted by a fluted candle holder, rests upon a base of sculpted lions, sphinxes, rams and female figures. The upper and lower reliefs bear vegetal and ornamental patterns while the three central registers portray Christ before Caiaphas, the Mocking of Christ, Christ before Pilate, Pilate Washing his Hands, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the Ascension. The culminating Easter scenes reflect the paschal candle’s function during the Easter season as a symbol of Christ resurrected, as evoked in an inscription on the base. A second fragmentary inscription refers to the unidentifiable patron’s desire for commemoration. A third inscription identifies Nicolaus de Angelo as the master sculptor and Petrus Vassallettus as playing a secondary role. Both were active in the second half of the 12th to the early 13th century and came from leading families of Roman sculptors: the Vassalletti and Cosmati (Nicolaus’s family). The candlestick is the only work signed by and securely attributed to Nicolaus and the scope of his contribution remains uncertain. A plausible theory attributes the base and first register to Petrus, based upon similarities to works signed by him and ascribed to his family, such as the cloister of S Giovanni in Laterano in Rome and the narthex of S Lorenzo fuori le Mura in Rome. Nicolaus probably executed the Christological scenes, distinguishable for their more dynamic, expressive figures and decorative chisel work, and appropriate for the master sculptor because of their centrality and significance. Early Christian sarcophagi and Carolingian ivories may have provided models for the figural types. This form of paschal candlestick was probably inspired by Roman columnar monuments carved with triumphal scenes....

Lighting fixture suspended from the ceiling, equipped with multiple lamps or candles. The massive, crown-shaped, Romanesque chandeliers, for example that made c. 1166 for Frederick I, King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, for the Palatine chapel in Aachen Cathedral, were gradually superseded by a form that emerged in the 15th century in the Low Countries. This type comprises a central moulded shaft, from which 6–36 upward-curving branches radiate, embellished with Gothic ornament and sometimes human, bird or animal figures. These bronze chandeliers were used in public buildings, churches and the houses of the wealthy, as depicted in the Arnolfini Marriage by Jan van Eyck (1434; London, N.G.). In the later 15th century the solid shaft was replaced by a traceried niche containing a figure, often a Virgin and child (e.g. Amsterdam, Rijksmus.). Expensive silver versions were less common, but designs exist, for example an early 16th-century Florentine silver, rock-crystal and topaz chandelier (priv. col., see ...

Places in the choir of a church set aside for the daily use of the clergy. They are usually made of wood and are found only in churches of the Western tradition. Choir-stalls were essentially places for standing, the clergy being required to do so during most of the services. Each stall consists of a folding seat, turning on hinges or pivots, with a Misericord under it, a standard on each side with elbow rest, a wainscot backing and, sometimes, a canopy above. Some form of book desk was provided in front.

The daily task of the members of a cathedral chapter was the recitation of the Psalter, particular psalms being allocated to the different prebends. At Lincoln Cathedral the initial Latin verses allocated to each canon, over-painted in modern times, are still to be found on the stall backs. An absentee canon was expected to have a deputy, called a ‘vicar choral’, who was paid ‘stall wages’. The seating in the choir-stalls of a great church mirrored the hierarchy of the organization. It was stipulated in the manuals of customs, such as the Sarum Consuetudinary, written in the early 13th century. In medieval England the principal place of honour in a secular ...

Armless folding chair (or chair that looks like it could be folded) used in medieval Europe to seat ecclesiastical and royal dignitaries. The faldistorium of 1242 from the monastery of Nonnberg (near Salzburg), which is decorated with a carved lion's head and paws on the crossbars, is said to have belonged to the Abbess Gertrude. Faldistoria appeared in Hungary in the 11th century; examples include the thrones of kings Béla III (...

From the time John Cassian established the first female foundation in Marseille in ad 410, monastic women lived in varying states of enclosure and were surrounded by diverse images and objects that contributed to their devotion, education and livelihood. The first rule for women, written in 512 by St Caesarius of Arles, emphasized their strict separation from men and the world, as did the Periculoso, a directive issued by Pope Boniface VIII (reg 1294–1303) in 1298. Various architectural solutions developed throughout the Middle Ages to reconcile the necessities of enclosure with the access required by male clerics to celebrate Mass and provide pastoral care. Nuns’ choirs, where the women would gather for their daily prayers, were often constructed as discreet spaces in the church, which allowed women to hear or see the Mass without interacting with the cleric, as in the 10th-century choir in the eastern transept gallery at St Cyriakus in Gernrode, Germany. In some Cistercian examples, the nuns’ choir appeared at the west end of the nave. Dominican and Franciscan architecture was largely varied. Double monasteries, which housed men and women, also required careful construction. A 7th-century text describing the church of St Brigida in ...

Term applied to a style of architecture and the decorative arts inspired by the Gothic architecture of medieval Europe. It has been particularly widely applied to churches but has also been used to describe castellated mansions, collegiate buildings, and houses. The Gothic Revival has also been described by many scholars as a movement, rather than style, for in the mid-19th century it was associated with and propagated by religious and political faith. From a hesitant start in the mid-18th century in England and Scotland, in the 19th century it became one of the principal styles of building throughout the world and continued in some huge projects until well into the 20th century (e.g. Episcopal Cathedral, Washington, DC, 1908–90; by G(eorge) F(rederick) Bodley and others). ‘Gothic Revival’ became the standard English term when Charles Locke Eastlake published A History of the Gothic Revival (1872). The word ‘Gothic’ had by then definitely mutated from a depreciatory epithet into the denomination of a style or period of medieval architecture. To distinguish medieval Gothic from modern Gothic, most European languages used the prefix ‘neo-’ (e.g. Dut. ...

Term used in a more or less discriminatory way to identify the 18th-century works of the Gothic Revival in British architecture and interior design. Some historians use the term as a convenient shorthand for the 18th-century phase of the Revival; others intend it to highlight the ways in which the ‘Gothick’ of the 18th century—the fanciful and thinly decorative architecture associated with dilettanti and antiquaries—is manifestly distinct from the more historicist works of the 19th-century ‘Gothic Revival’, whose architects not only drew upon different forms or styles of medieval Gothic but were motivated by liturgical, religious and social concerns rather than by 18th-century Associationist aesthetics. Both spellings were used in the 18th century, but during the 19th century ‘Gothick’ became obsolete: Eastlake (1872) wrote only of ‘Gothic’ and Clark (1928) followed his example. That preference has been maintained by such historians as Macaulay (1975) and McCarthy (...

English cabinetmaking firm in Leeds, prominent in the late 19th century. The company began as Messrs Kendell & Co., which was bought in 1864 by John Marsh and Edward Jones. Their furniture was executed in historical styles, often Gothic Revival, and was sold from both their Leeds workshop and a London showroom. Their distinguished succession of designers included Charles Bevan, Bruce Talbert and (in the 1880s and 1890s) W. R. Lethaby; in the early 20th century they made Art Nouveau furniture, and their designers included Edwin Lutyens in ...

Bowl, drinking cup, or goblet, usually without a foot, made from burr maple or a maple knot and frequently mounted with silver or silver-gilt bands at the lip and base. Mazers were made throughout late medieval northern Europe up to the early 16th century, and were revived in the early 20th century by Omar Ramsden....

(b Andernach, April 15, 1823; d Cologne, Sept 13, 1888).

German sculptor, writer, designer, collector, dealer and furniture-restorer. From 1846 to 1871 he made gothicizing sculptures for Cologne Cathedral: for example figures of evangelists, martyrs and angels and figured reliefs (limestone; south transept, portals and buttresses). He also produced sculpture in period styles for castles, public buildings and private houses, for example 36 limestone statues of German emperors (1882–7; Aachen, Rathaus). The balanced form of his blocklike standing figures shows the influence of classical sculpture, and their generally pensive expression may be traced to the influence of the Lukasbrüder (see Nazarenes). With the help of costumes, Mohr adapted sculpted figures to the style of architecture, but in general his work after 1860 is characterized by massiveness, broad surfaces and an expression of pathos.

Mohr’s later work suggests an admiration for Michelangelo and for the monumental sculpture of Mohr’s contemporaries Ernst Rietschel and Johannes Schilling. The sculptures Mohr made between ...

In the 19th century Wardour Street (in Soho off Leicester Square) was London’s principal centre for ecclesiastical furnishers and second-rank furniture shops. The heavy Gothic Revival furniture sold in these establishments led to the term being used as a term of abuse both for this furniture and for historical writing in a Gothic idiom....