download

504 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
working in Burgundy, there is nothing in England that shows
any real understanding ofthese neighbouring movements. The
well/known and much/admired Virgin and laughing Child
on the outer gateway of Winchester College has the smooth,
curving drapery ofthe international style but none ofits suavity
of pose or expression. The best work is to be found in bronze,
but this from its expense was used only for the tombs ofthe very
great. The effigy ofEdward III and the bronze mourners round
the tomb chest are works of genuine feeling, and the effigies of
the Black Prince, Richard II, and Anne of Bohemia make a
notable line ofsuccessors, where an actual likeness is more and
more vividly aimed at. This aim can be seen also in the ala-
baster effigy of Henry IV, cruder than the more stylized and in-
dividual 'laton* work, but with a convincing toughness of its
own.
The alabaster
quarries of Nottingham, Lincoln, and York
provided much ofthe material for tomb effigies. They also pnv
vided the basis of a thriving English trade in small statues and
retables, many ofwhich were exported to the Continent. From
the mid-'fourteenth century till the Reformation, the industry
and less sensitive in its
continued, growing more organized
productions. Some of the earlier
pieces have considerable
quality, and are not unrelated to the much finer work that was
being done on an even smaller scale on ivory plaques, ofwhich
the Grandisson triptych in the British Museum may be taken
as an example. But as the demand grew, it was met by readier,
more repetitive production, and a collection of English ala/
basters, unless most scrupulously picked, soon becomes weari'
some, though even in the second half of the fifteenth century
works were produced as graceful and charming as the alabaster
slab of the Annunciation inset on the tomb chest of
Thomas Boleyn in Wells cathedral, a wonderfully fresh
variant of a stock theme.
The carved effigy was not the only form of figural conv
memoration. is England pre-eminently the
country ofengraved brasses, though the metal sheets seem mainly to have been
imported from Flanders and Cologne and the most splendid