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510
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
great centres, and the one whose produce is best preserved, for,
apart from York city itself, the rich collection of fifteenth'
century glass in Great Malvern priory
church is the work ofthe
York glaziers. Very considerable realism had by now been
achieved. The figures are rounded, the draperies fall in natural
curves (PL 106 b); in the narrative scenes a genre element ap^
pears. This reflects an improvement in the cartoons; there is
also noticeable a lack of originality in using them. At Malvern
the same cartoon, sometimes reversed, was made to serve for
various personages. By the close of the century the English
tradition, which can be so clearly followed at York, was be^
ing modified by Flemish influences and free borrowing from
fifteentlvcentury Flemish designs, a repertory which England
could not equal. Henry VII's glazier was a German by origin,
Barnard Flower (d. 1517), who contributed four windows to
the great series ofrichly coloured and dramatic scenes in King's
which marks the
College chapel, Cambridge (1515-31),
splendid close ofour medieval glass.
English sculpture of the fifteenth century is also something
pattern'ridden. The gallery of carved figures in Henry V's
chantry at Westminster, completed in the middle years of the
century, contains notable figures such as that of St. George, in
which the problem of representing plate armour in stone is
capably handled without any loss ofmovement and liveliness,
but the smaller figures are squat, unexpressive, and repetitive,
and the famous reliefofthe king on horseback, with its attempt
to render a landscape background, is, for all its enterprise,
clumsy work. The figures ofthe choir screen at York are almost
But much
grotesque with their frizzed hair and gauche poses.
ofthe sculpture ofthe time has disappeared;
the great reredoses
with tiers offigures were left as shattered empty niches by waves
oficonoclasm. Here and there fragments suggest that work of
real quality has perished. Winchester has some striking heads,
full of feeling and power. In the Beauchamp chapel at Wat'
wick some charming figures surround the east window, and
the great ceiling ofthe Oxford Divinity School includes in its
pendent tabernacles some small figures vigorously cut.