A tricky but exciting project ticking away by cover of night this past year is piecing together fragments of the Cathedral’s medieval painted decoration, now beginning to shine bright again for the first time in over four centuries.

Almost every wall, pier, arch and vault of the medieval Cathedral would have been vividly painted and awesome in its original splendour. Although chance survivals such as the Cathedral’s C13th Wheel of Fortune, one of the finest examples in the country, provide snapshots and glimpses into these long-since faded schemes that would have once spanned the Cathedral, we must find other means to tease out the finer details.

The Wheel of Fortune, with Fortuna pulling the wheel of fate with men rising and falling on its turn, was saved from the whitewashing campaigns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by being obscured by the old quire pulpit.

Most of the other painted decoration is lost below whitewash, or has faded almost beyond identification from centuries of sun and humidity. Close study can reveal faint traces, and sometimes the interests of an art historian in the early twentieth century have recorded features that have since degraded further. Little survives of a painting of St Christopher bearing an infant Christ across a river, on a pier in the nave. Whaite produced a watercolour record of the outline as it survived in 1929.

Further details can be teased out with techniques such as Ultra-Voilet (UV) photography. The mural of St Christopher’s left foot has a fitting ghostly glow under UV.

We can creep forward in our understanding and reconstructions, and make educated guesses to fill in the gaps when we must. But something is lost when medieval Church art is condensed down to two-dimensional images. These paintings were created to be experienced and interacted with. They were woven into the Cathedral’s fabric but also its spaces, forming a part of its three and four-dimensional spiritual environments. The St Christopher mural, for example, loomed tall high up on the south nave pier closest to the Great West Door. It was in a prominent position to be conveniently viewed whilst passing the Cathedral. Medieval Christians believed such a glance at an image of St Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, would protect them from voilent or sudden death throughout that day. Particularly during crossing water, such as the River Medway.

Projection provides us the opportunity to view these designs in-situ and within the 3D environment of the Cathedral, as they were intended to be experienced. Other images, such as the small Christ low on a pier at the east end of the nave, appear to be positioned so that they could be touched. Perhaps this image was well worn long before the sixteenth-century.

Figurative paintings of Christ and saints form only one piece of the full picture. During high-level recording of the Cathedral’s masons’ marks in 2018, it was noticed that a lot more painted fragments survive high up in the east end of the building than had previously been appreciated, or ever recorded. Faint traces of a red masonry pattern familiar from a portion of wall in the South Quire Aisle apparently formed the major decoration in this area. The yellow Caen stone walls were first whitewashed, obscuring their masonry joints. Red masonry patterning was then applied to mimic much larger, more regular courses. This was in imitation of what in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was thought to be an ideal building, formed of large expensive stones.

This pattern apparently extended throughout the east end of the cathedral, interwoven in places with foliate patterning, and possibly also up onto the vaulting. Such extensive evidence survives of this scheme that almost a complete reconstruction can be proposed. Again however, 2D images cannot quite do justice to the inherently 3D nature of architectural paint schemes.

Huge thanks are extended to lighting technician Arianne Evans for entertaining increasingly mind-bending projection trials, in the above photo assisted by glamorous assistant brother Alex Pitcher.

Great advances are being made in LED lighting, but projecting onto medieval surfaces for significant lengths of time is likely to always be damaging. Although very much a work in progress, the aim is the production of an immersive evening light show.

Further reconstructions of medieval painted reconstructions are featured in our previous post Quire vaulting conservation and will also feature in our Medieval Perspectives summer 2021 exhibition.

Jacob Scott
Research Guild