Editorial note — Chapter III · OF PICTURES, AND IMAGES, AND CURTAINS, AND THE ORNAMENTS OF CHURCHES

[Footnote 256: Durandus had doubtless in his mind the ancient mosaic over the apsides of the earliest churches in Rome. The extremely beautiful one in San Clemente represents our Lord as crucified. The frescoes with which the walls of our own churches were anciently adorned, seem usually to have represented the Saviour as seated on the Throne of His Majesty. In the chancel of Widford, Herts, is, or was till lately, a fresco of the Saviour seated on a rainbow, a sword proceeding from His mouth, His feet and His hands pierced. In Alfriston, Sussex, there was, we believe, before it was whitewashed over by Bishop Buckner's order, a painting of a similar kind. There is a singular, and, we believe, undescribed painting over the altar in Llandanwg church, Merion. The Saviour is seated in judgment, as before: at His side is His Blessed Mother in a kneeling posture: around Him are angels blowing trumpets, and S. Peter in eucharistical vestments. There is a representation of the souls under the altar. Below are devils torturing souls in cauldrons of brimstone. The evangelistic symbols are also represented. In a fresco at Beverstone, Gloucestershire, our Saviour is represented on the Cross, with blood flowing from His side into a chalice. (See App. I.) There are remains also of a crucifixion in fresco, in the exquisite, but desecrated chapel of Prior Crauden, in the Deanery, Ely. On the Iconostasis of the Greco-Russian Church, all the three positions are to be found. In stained glass, the Crucifixion generally supplies the place of any other representation of the Saviour. Brasses occasionally, as a very curious one in Cobham, Surrey, represent His nativity or epiphany: but most commonly the Crucifixion, or a Trinity. There can be no doubt, that many of the most graphic pictures in our old poets owed their origin to the then undestroyed fresco paintings of churches. Some painting, like that above described, of hell, very probably suggested the noble lines of Spenser (i. ix. 50. 6):