Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 21, 1991 TAG: 9102210571
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The 7-foot-tall window is the centerpiece of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' refurbished medieval gallery, two rooms of statues and artifacts from Europe's Dark Ages.
The window and other items were placed in storage in 1985 while the gallery was redesigned to better display the collection. Curators cleaned the items and most of the collection was returned to the gallery late last year.
A related collection of Byzantine art is undergoing similar restoration and will reopen later this year, museum officials said.
The objects chronicle the all-powerful role of religion in medieval life, when peasants and sovereigns alike were bound by the Catholic Church's strict doctrines. The art that survives from those long centuries of feudalism and ecclesiastical rule is intensely religious - usually depicting biblical events or the lives of saints.
"This is art that was totally enmeshed in its community. It is expressive of the beliefs of a people and was the main focus of life in a medieval town," said Richard Woodward, the museum's deputy director for programs and planning.
The museum's collection includes a trio of carved wooden figures with curiously haunted faces that once adorned a German cathedral altar.
Several of the collection's elegant stone figures once gazed from the buttresses and turrets of the grand Gothic cathedrals of France.
Among those is an almost whimsical limestone statue of the martyred St. Denis, who is said to have carried his severed head several miles to his burial place.
The headless saint particularly appeals to the steady stream of schoolchildren who tour the gallery as part of their history lessons, Woodward said.
"It is just a wonderful piece for us to have. It can show children so much about the medieval world in a way they remember."
The window is one of the oldest and rarest examples of medieval glass in the United States, Woodward said. The museum purchased it, along with many of the other pieces in the collection, in That we have such a collection here, at a relatively young museum, is really extraordinary. Richard Woodward Museum deputy director the late 1960s.
"It's in good condition and not much Canterbury glass has left the cathedral," Woodward said. The English cathedral was one of the most important churches in Europe in medieval times, especially for pilgrims like those who regale their fellow travelers in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
The window features a scene of the last supper and another of saintly devotion. The figures are surrounded by a tapestry of red and yellow glass.
Stained glass-making reached its zenith in the Gothic period, as church officials tried to transform the dank, stone walls of their cathedrals into "transparent skins of glass," said Assistant Curator Joseph R. Bliss.
The museum's medieval collection is small compared to those at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, art historians said.
"[The Virginia museum] has some fine things that deserve seeing. I'm glad they've brought it out again," said Virginia Commonwealth University medieval art historian Sharon Hill. "The stained glass is probably the best thing they have."
"That we have such a collection here, at a relatively young museum, is really extraordinary," Woodward said. The New York and Boston museums house some of the finest medieval treasures, but began collecting those items in the 19th century, when medieval art was cheaper and easier to find, he said. The Virginia museum was built in 1936.
"We consider it one of the museum's greatest treasures. Part of our goal is to represent broadly the entire history of art, and the Gothic cathedrals are among the landmarks to the world," Woodward said.
by CNB