Sin and Self-Reflection: The Iconography, Patronage, and Reception of English Morality Wall Paintings, 1300-1450
Supervisor: Dr Jessica BarkerÌý Ìý Ìý Ìý Advisors: Professor Alixe BoveyÌýand Dr Jane Spooner
Funded by with support from the
This thesis examines ‘morality’ images in fourteenth and fifteenth-century English wall paintings. From the late thirteenth century, 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 innovative nature of morality wall paintings and their complex interrelationships to other morality and devotional imagery has been obscured in previous scholarship, which has tended to prioritise an iconographical approach. This thesis offers an expanded understanding of morality wall paintings, incorporating analyses of these paintings within their specific spatial and social contexts, as images intentionally commissioned and existing within particular communities, and within the broader culture of morality in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.
As the first sustained analysis of the phenomenon of morality paintings in England, the thesis focuses on four case studies: three in churches: St Pega’s Church in Peakirk, Cambridgeshire; in Trotton, West Sussex; and St John the Baptist’s Church in Corby Glen, Lincolnshire; and one in a domestic building: in Cambridgeshire. By exploring the programme of images in these buildings through a broader methodological and analytic framework foregrounding spatial analysis and social history, new insights can be revealed as to how both lay and clerical patrons 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 church education and towards their more dynamic functions: communicating and reinforcing complex doctrinal, ethical, and psychological understandings of morality to their audiences, shaping the public perception of their patrons, and encouraging self-reflection.
Education
2021-2026: PhD, 91ÖÆƬ³§
2020-2021: MSt Interdisciplinary Historical Research (Medieval Studies), University of Oxford
2017-2020: BA (Hons.) History of Art, 91ÖÆƬ³§
Research Grants, Scholarships, and Awards
2021-2025:
2020-2021:Ìý
2020: The Sam Fogg Dissertation Prize, 91ÖÆƬ³§
Research Interests
- History of emotions and behaviour
- History of the philosophy of morality and conscience
- History of psychology
- Evaluating the visual as a source for social history
- European wall paintings and art 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
‘’ Workshop, 91ÖÆƬ³§, 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:ÌýImmediations Postgraduate Journal (2022 and 2023)
Postgraduate Assistant:ÌýNational Wall Paintings Survey Project (2022)
Academic Teaching
Associate Lecturer, ‘Seeing Medieval and Early Renaissance Art’ (designed and delivered), BA1 Topic Course, 91ÖÆƬ³§, Autumn 2024
Teaching Assistant, BA2 Physical Histories, 91ÖÆƬ³§, Autumn 2023
Teaching Assistant, Summer University, 91ÖÆƬ³§, Summer 2023