Artists, Craftsmen

Abstract

In monasteries and cathedrals, and especially in parish churches, religious ideas were transmitted to the pre-reformation laity by sculptures, wood-carvings, screen-paintings, murals and stained glass. The last two were the largest, and instructionally the most effective. That such art forms were still produced in the early sixteenth century is indicated by details of costume or armour, as in the St George window at St Neot, and by heraldic devices, like Katherine of Aragon’s pomegranate on the Bridford screen. Inscriptions date bench-ends at Monkleigh, Coldridge, Altarnun and Hartland to 1508, 1511, 1525 and 1530, screens at Marwood and Bradninch to about 1520 and 1528, and sculpture at Woodleigh to about 1527. There is also dated glass, notably that of 1523–9 at St Neot.¹