BristolConference - Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi

Prof. Nigel Morgan
(Oslo University)
Donors, Text Scrolls and Devotions in English Stained Glass and Manuscript Painting, c.1300-1450
The inscribed scrolls presented by donors to Christ, the Virgin or the saint before whom
they kneel are more varied in their texts and intentions than is commonly supposed. These
simulate the spoken words of the donors, or alternatively they were viewed as written
petitions, and they have received little systematic study. They provide evidence regarding
devotional attitudes, prayer intentions, and are directed towards aid for the condition of
the donors within this world, and also in their expectations for the afterlife. Examples from
stained glass will be paralleled with others from illuminated manuscripts, whose
accompanying prayers in the text provide additional information for interpretations of
these images.
Assoc. Prof. Elizabeth Pastan
(Emory University, Atlanta)
Secular Patronage in the Programme of the Paradisus Clausiralis: Indiana's Saint Catherine Seized
for Martyrdom (c.1517) and the Glazed Cloister of Louoain
A small, exquisitely detailed, early sixteenth-century stained glass panel of St Catherine
Seized for Martyrdom, in Bloomington, Indiana, is one of the treasures first published in
the checklists of American collections. Seminal studies by Vanden Bemden and Kerr
(1983-84) and Wayment (1988, 1989) established the context for the panel. The style, size,
and collecting history offer suggestive evidence that the St Catherine panel comes from
the Charterhouse of Louvain. This paper will present the iconographic case for attribution
to Louvain.
While eighteenth-century chroniclers refer to a typological programme in the Great Cloister,
Maes uncovered references and panels corresponding to a cycle of St Nicholas. Wayment
further expanded the hagiographical programme by connecting panels from the life of
St John with a document of 19 June 1517 that named John, Lord of Berg, as the donor of
stained glass that the glazier Jan Diependale had been dilatory in completing. In the case
of St Catherine, there is no established typological connection, but the scene from her
martyrdom may be related to a particular donor named Catherine from the Boelen family
of Amsterdam.
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