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THE MONUMENTAL EFFIGIES OF SCOTLAND. 329 VI. THE MONUMENTAL EFFIGIES OF SCOTLAND, FROM THE THIRTEENTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. BY ROBERT BRYDALL, F.S.A. SOOT. The custom of carving monumental effigies in full relief does not seem to have come into vogue in Scotland till the thirteenth century—this being also the case in England. From the beginning of that period the art of the sculptor had made great progress both in Britain and on the Continent. At the close of the twelfth century, artists were beginning to depart from the servile imitation of the work of earlier carvers, to think more for themselves, and to direct their attention to nature ; more ease began to appear in rendering the human figure; form was more gracefully expressed, and drapery was treated with much greater freedom. When the fourteenth century drew towards its end, design in sculpture began to lose something of the purity of its style, more attention being given to detail than to general effect; and at the dawn of the sixteenth century, the sculptor, in Scotland, began to degenerate into a mere carver. The incised slab was the earliest form of the sculptured effigy, a treat- ment of the figure in flat relief intervening. The incised slabs, as well as those in flat relief, which were usually formed as coffin-lids, did not, however, entirely disappear on the introduction of the figure in full relief, examples of both being at Dundrennan Abbey and Aberdalgie, as well as elsewhere. An interesting example of the incised slab was discovered at Creich in Fife in 1839, while digging a grave in the old church; on this slab two figures under tabernacle-work are incised, with two shields bearing the Barclay and Douglas arms : hollows have been sunk for the faces and hands, which were probably of a different material; and the well cut inscription identifies the figures as those of David Barclay, who died in 1400, and his wife Helena Douglas, who died in 1421.
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