The world upside down
Over the past 10 years, students from City and Guilds of London Art School in Kennington have been making a 21st-century contribution to the late-medieval splendours of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, as John Goodall explains
Art students have been making a 21stcentury contribution to the late-medieval splendours of St George’s Chapel, as John Goodall explains
‘One way to articulate the sacred space was to surround it with the prosaic, the ludicrous or the hideous’
Presiding over the centre of the royal Wedding festivities in Windsor later this week will be one particularly bizarre group of spectators. They include creatures from the natural world—a writhing octopus and a snail—as well as from fantasy—a dragon and phoenix—and even from nightmare— a trumpeting figure and a mouse with a human ear protruding from its back. They are not living and breathing onlookers, of course, but, instead, new works of sculpture installed beneath parapets of st george’s Chapel as part of an imaginative conservation project to this great church.
The main body of st george’s Chapel, begun in 1475, is encrusted with sculpture. such carving was intended to underline the opulence of the building as a royal chapel and the seat of the Order of the garter (Country Life, December 15/22, 2010). A choir of angels, for example, represented from the waist up, runs through the main elevations, transforming the interior into a celestial space. Overhead, the vaults are studded with bosses. The furnishings, notably the magnificent 15th-century choir stalls, are replete with a wealth of figurative and decorative carving.
externally, the building is no less magnificently treated. Crowning the chapel pinnacles are heraldic beasts and set beneath the parapets is a sequence of about 440 small sculptures, termed ‘corbels’, each one incorporated within a moulded string-course or ‘table’. it’s here—in what medieval documents would describe as a ‘corbel table’—that the modern sculpture appears, interlaid with older carvings of faces, foliage and such legendary scenes as st george fighting the dragon.
in its present form, the corbel table at Windsor is an entirely modern creation, the original having been replaced during 19thcentury restoration work. The Victorian masons worked in Bath stone, which contrasts in colour with the Taynton of the medieval building. They may have tried to copy the subject matter of the carving they replaced, but that is by no means certain. What can be said with confidence, however, is that the vanished medieval sculpture is likely to have included similar subject matter.
The medieval conception of divine order demanded a corresponding vision of chaos; good demands evil, for example, and every quality of one parodies and reinforces that of its counterpart. Therefore, one way of articulating the sacred space at Windsor was—paradoxically—to surround it with imagery that celebrated the very opposite: the prosaic, the ludicrous or the hideous. Turning the world upside down in this way also created monsters that might act as guardians of the building, scaring away malevolent spirits.
in 2003, work began on a long-term conservation programme at st george’s, embracing the entire college (Country Life, May 15, 2013). When undertaking a detailed preliminary assessment of the chapel, it became apparent to the surveyor of the Fabric, Martin Ashley, that some—about 60—of the external 19th-century sculptures were now failing. Various possible alternative courses of action were considered.
It seemed over-zealous, for example, to consolidate the eroded sculpture, particularly when it would detract from the appearance of the building. Nor were the 19th-century figures of sufficient quality or interest to merit recreation. The obvious answer, therefore, was to commission new corbels, but how could their quality be assured and who should determine the subject matter?
With the support of the Fabric Advisory Committee, the Dean and Canons took the imaginative step of entering into partnership with the City and Guilds of London Art School in Kennington. Working with senior tutors there, and as part of their carving course, students have been invited to design their own pieces of sculpture for the building. The project has run for the past 10 years, and its success can be judged from the sculpture that has been completed.
A visit to Windsor introduces each cohort to St George’s Chapel. Thereafter, the students develop their own ideas as they choose. It’s common for grotesques to start on paper as sketches or as roughly-modelled clay maquettes. These are then worked up as large-scale models and, if deemed successful, carved in stone. Particular care has been taken to identify a stone that matches the original Taynton (which is no longer quarried) and the new sculpture has been cut into blocks quarried at Syreford, near Cheltenham.
‘Students have been invited to design their own sculpture for the building
In developing each corbel proposal, there are important practical and aesthetic constraints. Given the exposed situation of the sculpture, it is important that rainwater will run off it. To be legible from the ground, moreover, it needs to be boldly detailed. Another concern is that it must sit comfortably within the moulding of the table—many of the Victorian figures escape from the moulding altogether and interrupt, rather than complement, the architectural lines of the building.
At regular intervals, the proposals are assessed by a small advisory panel (of which I am a member) and the number of designs taken forward is gradually reduced. Finally, the completed sculptures are taken to Windsor and approved both by the Dean and Canons and the Fabric Advisory Committee. The payment for each piece is divided between the school, to cover costs, and the student.
The first three were delivered in 2006, and this year, the programme will come to an end. In all, a total of 64 new corbels have been commissioned. Some are deliberately grotesque, others celebrate Nature, history or fable. Once a new corbel has been accepted, it is assigned a position on the building. The installation of new corbels necessarily follows the progress of the scaffold round the building, so some of the completed sculpture is still in storage.
The ingenuity of this arrangement is that, over the past 10 years, it has produced a steady flow of sculpture in the spirit of the medieval originals that complements a great medieval building, but connects it with the contemporary world. After all, as well as being a tourist attraction, St George’s remains a living institution with a celebrated choir and a daily regimen of services and prayer open to all. For the students, meanwhile, it offers experience of a real project and a place for their sculpture on a historic building of international importance. So if you’re attending the Royal Wedding, or only watching it on television, do let your eyes wander towards the parapets of St George’s. After the couple, they will surely be the most remarkable thing you’ll see on the day.
‘The scheme has produced a steady flow of sculpture in the spirit of the medieval originals