Sin and Self-Reflection: The Iconography and Viewership of ‘Morality Images’ in English Wall Painting, c.1300-1450
Supervisor: Dr Jessica Barker Advisors: Professor Alixe Bovey and Dr Jane Spooner
Funded by Consortium for the Humanities and Arts South-East England (CHASE) with support from the Garfield Weston Foundation
This thesis examines ‘morality’ images in fourteenth-century English wall paintings. From the late thirteenth century, diverse new iconographic subjects focusing on defining, categorising, and offering judgement on human behaviour began to emerge on the walls of churches and domestic buildings. These subject matters, such as the Seven Deadly Sins, and less familiar iconographies such as the Warning to Blasphemers, were increasingly incorporated into iconographic schemes. The radical nature of morality wall paintings and their complex interrelationships amongst programmes of imagery has been obscured in previous scholarship, which has tended to prioritise an iconographical approach. Through an examination of schemes including morality imagery, this thesis interrogates a major shift in the communication of emotional and behavioural expectations in the late medieval period.
As the first sustained analysis of the phenomenon of morality paintings in England, this thesis situates these schemes within their broader cultural context. It focuses on four case studies: three in churches – St Pega’s Church in Peakirk, Cambridgeshire; St George’s Church in Trotton, West Sussex; and St John the Baptists’ Church at Corby Glen in Lincolnshire – and one in a surviving domestic building – Longthorpe Tower in Cambridgeshire. By exploring the programme of images in these buildings through a broader methodological and analytic framework foregrounding social history and the history of emotions, new insights can be revealed as to how the patrons of such imagery, laypeople and the clergy, adapted and communicated burgeoning moral concerns to their communities. This thesis thus seeks to shift our understanding of the significance of these murals away from ideas of pervasive church education and towards their more dynamic functions: communicating and reinforcing complex doctrinal, ethical, and psychological understandings of morality, shaping public perception of their patrons, and encouraging self-reflection.
Education
2021-present: PhD, The Courtauld Institute of Art
2020-2021: MSt Historical Research (Medieval Studies), University of Oxford
2017-2020: BA (Hons.) History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art
Research Grants, Scholarships, and Awards
2021-Present: AHRC Doctoral Studentship, Consortium for the Humanities and Arts South-East England
2020-2021: Clarendon Scholarship, University of Oxford
2020: The Sam Fogg Dissertation Prize, The Courtauld Institute of Art: ‘The Late-Medieval Last Judgement Wall-Painting at Trotton’
Research Interests
- Emotions, behaviour, cognition, and psychology, and how images can inform us of how they were understood in the past
- Sin and morality, and theories of conscience
- Gesture and facial expression
- Evaluating the visual as a historical source for social and psychological history
- European Wall Paintings 1200-1500
Select Conferences, Workshops, & Talks
‘Full of All the Seven Deadly Sins: What do late medieval ‘Morality’ wall paintings have to do with emotional and bodily perception?’, Medieval Research Seminar, Centre for Medieval Studies University of Exeter, 22 May 2024
‘Confronting Death: Viewing the Three Living and Three Dead at Longthorpe Tower’, Courtauld Postgraduate Symposium, 17 May 2024
‘Self-Identification in a Late Medieval English Wall Painting of Sin’, Authority and Identity in the Middle Ages, Courtauld Medieval Postgraduate Symposium, 15 March 2024
‘Charitable Salvation: Morality and Identity in the Wall Paintings at Trotton’, British Archaeological Association, Chichester Conference, 4-8 September 2023
‘Researching Medieval Wall Paintings’ Workshop, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 17 May 2023 (CHASE funded) (Paper given: ‘Conservation, Copies, and Conundrums: The Wall Paintings at Corby Glen, Lincolnshire’)
‘The Iconography and Viewership of ‘Morality Images’ in English Wall Painting, c.1300-1450’, 2nd Year Medieval Symposium, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2 May 2023
Other Academic Activity
Doctoral Placement, Buildings Curation, Hampton Court Palace (January-April 2024)
Founder and Co-convenor with Katharine Waldron (University of Oxford and Hamilton Kerr Institute), Medieval Wall Paintings Group
Doctoral Placement, Project for visitor interpretation: ‘Viewing the Medieval Wall Paintings at Canterbury’, Archives, Canterbury Cathedral (May-August 2023)
Reviews Editor: Immediations Postgraduate Journal (2022 and 2023)
Postgraduate Assistant: National Wall Paintings Survey Project (2022)
Academic Teaching
Associate Lecturer, ‘Seeing Medieval and Early Renaissance Art’, BA1 Topic Course, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Autumn 2024
Teaching Assistant, BA2 Physical Histories, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Autumn 2023
Teaching Assistant, Summer University, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Summer 2023