Historic Churches 2021

26 BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON HISTORIC CHURCHES 28 TH ANNUAL EDITION The Doom at St Thomas Salisbury is probably one of the best-known medieval wall paintings in Britain. It enables the viewer to appreciate the original impact of a ‘complete’ painting of The Last Judgement from the later Middle Ages. Situated in the traditional position above the chancel arch the composition would fill the view and fix the attention of medieval worshippers. Murals of the last judgement survive in Britain from the end of the 11th century to the mid-16th century. This painting is typical of a late medieval representation with a wealth of iconographic and incidental detail. It shares much in common with the slightly earlier Doom painting at Holy Trinity, Coventry (circa 1435). These are both impressive murals of lofty, late medieval town churches. They owe their present apparent completeness to 19th-century intervention and repainting. They share many visual details, such as the motif of the alewife in her fashionable headdress (lower left in the detail shown here). In both cases this costume detail helps to confirm their date, in the case of St Thomas’s, Salisbury, pointing to the 1470s. In spite of the extensive repainting, St Thomas’s also preserves stylistic indications, such as the bulky and angular folds of drapery around, for example, the interceding Virgin, suggesting the influence of late 15th century Netherlandish art. However, the composition at Salisbury is closely related to earlier medieval Dooms in England, and as is common in the intrinsically conservative nature of much English public art of this period, there are few other indications of continental influence. Popular and effective as an illustration, but often dismissed in more scholarly treatments of art history, the Doom at St Thomas’s may benefit from the recent scholarly interest in the impact of extensive 19th century repainting on Victorian and contemporary viewers (see Kate Giles’s, work on Pickering, forthcoming). Dr Miriam Gill, Leicester University