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As we count down the hours to St Edmund's Day, an art history mystery from Essex: the painting of the martyrdom of St Edmund that once hung in Greensted church (sadly stolen in January 2012)
Greensted - the oldest wooden church in the world - has a special connection to St Edmund because the feretory containing the saint's body rested there on its way to safety in London in 1010
Some have even suggested that the wooden church standing today is the same one that housed the feretory in 1010 (although dendrochronology suggests the church might be a bit later)
At some point (though it's unclear when) the church acquired a c16th painting of the martyrdom of St Edmund, which W.G. Benham dated to around 1500
What makes this painting special? Well, it's the earliest surviving 'modern' depiction of St Edmund that shows the c16th transition from formal depictions of saints to a greater focus on the pathos of their martyrdoms
The closest analogy to the Greensted image is perhaps the remarkable late c15th wallpainting at Pickering, Yorks (although Pickering was HEAVILY touched up in the Victorian era)
But compare the Greensted painting to the stereotyped, formal portrayals of St Edmund on early c16th rood screen dadoes (royal robes, holding his instrument of martyrdom) and you can really see the difference
However, the real significance of the Greensted image is that it appears to be the ancestor of the post-Reformation iconographic tradition of St Edmund - where the king is usually almost naked apart from his crown, and portrayed with archers in a dark wood
So the loss of the Greensted painting (which I once saw in person) is a significant one because it precludes any further study of this fascinating 'transitional' image of the saint. This is the first 'early modern' image of Edmund that shows the evolution of his cult
The Greensted painting is probably the last surviving post-Reformation portrayal of St Edmund in English art (or at least the most stylistically advanced...). But where did it come from?
The last pre-Reformation portrayal of St Edmund for which we have documentary evidence (though it doesn't survive) is glass at St Peter Parmentergate installed during Mary I's reign in 1558
But portrayals of St Edmund produced by Continental artists for English Catholic exiles appear from the 1580s, and tend to follow the pattern established by the Greensted painting - including the telescoping of time by simultaneously portraying the martyrdom and the severed head
So, in short, I'd absolutely love to know where the Greensted painting came from. Was it made for a church, or for domestic devotion? Paintings like this don't really fit into the context of early c16th English church decoration, so perhaps the latter
Or is the painting not English at all? This is a particularly intriguing possibility - that the painting might be connected with one of the Continental St Edmund cults. Again, we need some idea of provenance...
(and if the bastard who had the painting stolen to order is reading this thread GIVE IT BACK)
