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Out of the wilderness : a fourteenth-century English drawing of John the Baptist

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Luxford_2010_Gesta_Out.pdf (7.653Mb)
Date
2010
Author
Luxford, Julian Marcus
Keywords
NX Arts in general
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Abstract
London, British Library, MS Royal 10 B XIV contains a large drawing of St. John the Baptist that is both exceptional for its quality and iconographically unique. Not previously noticed by art historians, it constitutes an important addition to English art of the early to mid-fourteenth century. This paper explores the physical nature of the drawing, its bibliographical context (in a book of natural philosophy), the nature and meaning of its imagery, and its artistic context and associations, within the broader framework of its ownership and use by Benedictine monks of Saint Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury. The drawing is considered a symptom of a wider interest in the acquisition of manuscript illumination at the abbey during the first half of the fourteenth century. It can be dated to about 1335-40 and is thought to have been executed in southeast England or East Anglia, where the works of art to which it is closest in stylistic and iconographic terms were produced. The iconography includes a number of motifs rare or unparalleled in images of John the Baptist, including a figure of Salome beneath the saint's feet and, most remarkably, a monumental Gothic arch composed of living oak trees, which frames the saint. The detail and semantic richness of this imagery make it practically certain that the drawing was made as a focus of devotion, probably for the manuscript's first recorded owner, the Oxford scholar-monk John of Lingfield.
Citation
Luxford , J M 2010 , ' Out of the wilderness : a fourteenth-century English drawing of John the Baptist ' , Gesta , vol. 49 , no. 2 , pp. 137-150 . https://doi.org/10.2307/41550543
Publication
Gesta
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.2307/41550543
ISSN
0016-920X
Type
Journal article
Rights
© The International Center of Medieval Art 2010
Collections
  • Art History Research
  • St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80052153307&partnerID=8YFLogxK
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41550543
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/5215

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