Wall Paintings
The wall paintings in the Chapel are considered to be the most remarkable work of art in the College. They are the work of at least four master painters, including William Baker, who took eight years to complete them (1479–87). In the Flemish style, they adorn the sides of the chapel. On the North side the paintings depict the Virgin Mary (to whom the chapel is dedicated), while those on the South side tell a popular medieval story about a mythical Empress. These paintings were whitewashed over in 1560 as a result of an order from the new protestant church authorities which banned depictions of mythical miracles. They were left obscured and forgotten for the best part of 300 years until they were rediscovered in 1847, and it was not until 1923 that they were cleaned, restored and revealed by the removal of the stall canopies.
Read more about this topic: Eton College Chapel
Famous quotes containing the words wall and/or paintings:
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making process—a process based not on synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one. Paintings were made—constructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes and skills and attitudes—but photographs, as the man on the street put, were taken.”
—Jean Szarkowski (b. 1925)