Wall painting, Canterbury cathedral
Photo © S. Alsford
Cathedrals, and to a lesser extent parish churches, were not as austere
as they may appear today. Walls, arches, columns were often decorated
with brightly coloured paintings, serving the same illustrative feature
as stained-glass windows. Few examples of this have survived down to
modern times. The example above, from St. Anselm's chapel
in Canterbury cathedral, was fortunately covered by a buttress wall and
owes its survival to that; dating to ca.1160, it shows St. Paul and
the viper.
The example below is part of a painting in a blind arch (19' high by 9' wide)
of the cathedral's North Quire Aisle; from the fifteenth century, it
shows scenes from the life of St. Eustace. It was extensively
retouched in the twenthieth century, and I have exaggerated the colours
digitally, to give more of a sense of how it might originally have
appeared.
Wall painting, Canterbury cathedral
Photo © S. Alsford
The wall paintings below are in the Jesus Chapel at Norwich cathedral.
Wall paintings, Norwich cathedral
Photos © S. Alsford