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ART 493
Frome and Erdisley, a particular individuality which makes
them the most interesting of the products of our provincial
schools. Here and in many parts of England (the Yorkshire
churches are a notable group) there is an inventive confusion of
dragons, griffins, signs ofthe zodiac, symbols ofthe evangelists,
wild huntsmen, and creatures from the bestiary. A great Bible
in the Bodleian Library (MS. Auct. E. Infra, i and 2) has
a remarkable gallery of such themes and brings to a high state
of excellence this tangled, violent
pattern making.
Figural representation of a naturalistic kind advanced more
slowly. A Psalter made for St. Albans about 1130 (now preserved
at St. Godehard's church in Hildesheim) shows a new
wave of Byzantine influence, which possibly came through
Ottoman versions, and in which the continental upbringing
and contacts of the Empress Matilda may have had some part.
The biblical scenes are still highly formalized, but are lucidly
set out in a framed space, not enmeshed in whirling coils. The
Bury Bible, painted at Bury St. Edmunds in the middle years
ofthe century, is the greatest product ofthis phase, the work of
an important artist who could create a sense of space around his
figures, and whose deep-toned colours lend a new solemnity to
his work. Close in style, possibly even by his hand, is the fresco
of St. Paul and the viper at Canterbury (PL 95 &), the greatest
surviving medieval wall-painting in England. Here a Byzan
tine style and pose has been fully absorbed and a singularly
impressive and convincing work produced. Canterbury has
other wall-paintings, in St. Gabriel's chapel in the crypt,
probably dating from the 1 1 3O*s, which are offine quality and
further evidence of the lost achievement in this branch of the
arts, now little known except in shadowy remains or in the
reduced scale of manuscript illumination.
Throughout the century there is a dual movement, natural
ism, linked with Byzantine humanist conventions, and the old
barbaric tradition ofintricate and formalized patterns. Some
times the two blend as in the brilliant pages of the Lambeth
Bible, or in the work ofsome ofthe hands, in particular that of
the so-called Master ofthe Leaping Figures, in the Winchester