Description
Book SynopsisPevsner calls it ‘marvellous’. Yet the reredos of the fifteenth-century chapel of All Souls College, Oxford, with its combination of medieval niches and statuary by George Gilbert Scott, has remained one of the unsung glories of both medieval perpendicular architecture and Victorian restoration. Informed by recent scientifi c investigation of its stonework and its surviving medieval polychromy, this volume traces for the fi rst time the entire history of the reredos in its architectural and religious context – from the phases of its medieval and early Tudor construction, through its covering up with a succession of baroque and neoclassical decorative schemes, to its uncovering and
restoration in the 1870s.
The book provides a novel and revealing vantage point on the artistic, cultural and ecclesiological history of Britain across four centuries.
Trade ReviewA real revelation and a genuine pleasure to read. The editor has assembled an expert cast of contributors who, between them, brilliantly tell the story of how changing tastes in art, education, and religion played out at All Souls, superbly illustrated in a slew of colour pictures ... It is, all told, a triumph. * Church Times *
