|
[lady chapel] |
The Lady Chapel in Winchester Cathedral features some wonderful wall paintings. These are the paintings from the top row of the south wall, on the right side of altar, with some links to more detail of the stories from the Cantigas de Santa Maria.
1. A young man slips a ring over the finger of a statue of the Virgin Mary for safekeeping but cannot take it off. He is therefore effectively betrothed to the Virgin Mary and leaves his friends to become a monk.
This is pretty close to panel 3 of Cantiga XLII from the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso the Wise.
2. A portrait of Thomas Silkstede who commissioned the paintings in about 1500
3. A young Jewish boy in Bourges goes with his Christian friends to church and takes Holy Communion with them. His father, a glass-maker, is furious and throws him into the furnace but he is rescued by the Virgin Mary.
This is Cantiga IV of the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alphonso the Wise.
4. A woman receives back her son who had been kidnapped and restores the statue of the Child Jesus which she had taken as a hostage.
This is Cantiga XXVI of the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alphonso the Wise
5. The Virgin Mary explains to the builder of a church how to construct a capstan so that boys can lift heavy columns.
6. A monk, loose in life but devoted to the Virgin Mary, falls off a bridge at night and drowns. Demons claim his soul but Mary saves it.
7. The Virgin Mary saves men from a shipwreck.
There are a number of Cantigas on this topic, which was then and remains to this day a very popular motif. Amongst them are Cantigas XXXVI, CXII, CLXXII and CCCXXXIX. Of these the most likely appears to me to be Cantiga CLXXII. I suspect that if I had access to facsimiles of all of the illustrations from the Cantigas it would be possible to be certain, since the imagery in Cantiga XLII (the only one I've found online) is strikingly similar to the frieze panel.