The Twelfth Century Tympanum - A MASTERPIECE

Christ in Majesty was one of the favourite themes found throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. We see Christ seated, with a cruciform halo, his right hand upheld in blessing, his left holding a book which rests on his knee. He is set inside an oval or mandorla which is carried by four swinging angels. With consummate artistry the sculptor breaks the arc with the angels' hands and with Christ's feet, the ankle bones placed at a sharp angle that we can almost feel the muscles and tendons. The rippling folds of Christ's robes and the angels' wings have this same tactile quality.

In 1936 the artist John Piper with his wife Myfanwy set out in search of Anglo-Saxon and Romanesque carvings, and when later that year he wrote about it he said quite simply that the tympanum at Rowlestone was 'a masterpiece'. He describes it with the eye of an artist and it is worth quoting since it helps us to appreciate just how magnificent an achievement it is:

Here a sustained line is used in a most subtle way to give us a design which is at once rhythmical and rigid ­as if the Christ enthroned is both a seated, immovable Majesty and a flowing abundant Life. Not again until Blake did this specially English genius show itself so well: this genius for a making a line at once create a shape and enrich it with meaning as part of a whole design .....

He then went on to speak of 'the Rowlestone quality', and contrasted it with the elaborate carving at Kilpeck or the font at Eardisley, and concluded that although they were undoubtedly very fine and the work of highly accomplished craftsmen but compared with Rowlestone 'less personal, and less infused with feeling.'