The Swansea Altarpiece

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• 1. Carved images
• 2. Setting and origins
• 3. Medieval alabaster
• 4. Did you know...
• 5. Find out more
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Carved images

The 15th-century Swansea Altarpiece is one of very few medieval altarpieces to survive in Britain. It consists of a series of pictures carved from alabaster, which read from left to right like a strip cartoon.

The four smaller panels tell the story of the Virgin - first we have the Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi, showing Mary as the Mother of God. Working right, we see the matching scenes of Christ's Assumption into Heaven, where we can see only his feet as he soars out of shot, and the Virgin's own Assumption, combined with her triumphal Coronation by the Trinity. The central panel also shows the Trinity - God the Father, as an old man, the Son on the cross, and the Holy Spirit (the Dove), which has now been lost, leaving only a hole at the top of the cross where he would have been fixed.

The whole narrative is framed by St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist. The Baptist holds a lamb and wears his traditional camel robe - you can see its head and hooves hanging down. The Evangelist has a chalice, from which emerges a tiny dragon, and a palm.

These saints were two of the most popular in pre-Reformation England, and with others, like St Catherine and St Margaret, would have been as familiar to the viewer as their own family. A Somerset will from the period refers specifically to St John the Evangelist, 'whom [the author] ha[s] always worshipped and loved...'. Each saint was depicted with his or her symbols, which provided a short cut to recognition - St John the Baptist with his lamb, for example. They formed a language that every late medieval churchgoer would have understood.

'Each saint was depicted with his or her symbols, which provided a short cut to recognition.'

This altarpiece therefore gives us an enticing glimpse of the lost world of Catholic England - hidden from us by the veil of the Reformation and of intervening years. This world was one that might be more familiar to Latin-American worshippers than to modern English people.

Churches were ablaze with colour, and gold highlights glittered in the light of many candles. These places of worship were stuffed with devotional images, which were adorned on festival days and adored on others. The Swansea Altarpiece retains more of its original colouring than most other surviving alabaster panels, but is still really a shadow of the glorious object it must once have been.

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Published: 2001-05-01