The Grotesque in Church Art :: Masks and Faces.

Masks and Faces.

T
FOLIATE MASK,
THE CHOIR,
BEVERLEY MINSTER.he merriest, oddest, most ill-assorted company in the world meet together in the masks and faces of Gothic ornament. Space could always be found for a head, and skill to execute it. Yet though the variety is immense, the faces of Gothic art will be found to classify themselves very definitely.

Perhaps the most prevalent type is the classic mask with leaves issuing from the mouth. This may be an idea of the mask which every player in the ancient drama wore, displayed as an ornament with laurel, bay, oak, ivy, or what not, inserted in the mouth, because it was pierced for speaking through, and the only aperture in which the decorative branches could be inserted. Or seeds might germinate in sculptured masks and so have suggested the idea. Masks were hung in vineyards, etc.

FOLIATE MASK, DORCHESTER, OXON.

FOLIATE MASK, ST. MARY’S MINSTER, ISLE OF THANET.

A mask above the internal tower-doorway in the Lady Chapel of Dorchester Abbey has a close resemblance to the classic mask in the protruding lips, which, for the conveying of the voice for the great distance necessary in the arrangement of the ancient theatres, were often shaped like a shallow speaking-trumpet. The leaves appear to be the vine, and so the head, perhaps, that of Bacchus. Between the eyebrows will be noticed an angular projection. This is probably explained by a mask in a misericorde in St. Mary’s Minster, in which some object, perhaps the nasal of a helmet, comes down the middle of the forehead. The leaves in this case appear to be oak, which is, indeed, the prevailing tree used for the purpose.

FOLIATE MASK, BEVERLEY MINSTER.

INDIAN MASK, ST. MARY’S, BEVERLEY.

Occasionally a mask with leaves has the tongue protruding.

LATE ITALIAN FOLIATE MASK, WESTMINSTER.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable masks in Gothic is on another misericorde in the same town, but in St. Mary’s Church; in which the features, the head-dress, the treatment of the ears, are all Indian, while the leaves are those of the palm. This is, perhaps, unique as an instance of Gothic work so nearly purely Indian in its form.

RIPON, late Fifteenth Century.

Sometimes the leaves are much elaborated as in one of the late misericordes of Westminster Abbey; in a few cases the original simplicity is quite lost, and we have, as at Ripon, the mask idea run mad, inverted, and the leaves become a graceful composition of foliage, flower, and fruit.

A rosette from the tomb of Bishop de La Wich, Chichester, has four animal faces in an excellent design.

ROSETTE ON TOMB OF
BISHOP DE LA WICH,
CHICHESTER.

Often masks are of the simple description known as the Notch-head; these are of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They are generally found in exposed situations at some elevation, as among the series of corbels (corbula a small basket) or brackets called the corbel-table, supporting a stone course or cornice. The likeness to the human face caused by the shadows of the T varies in different examples. That below, by curving back at the base, suggests the idea of a mouth. Occasionally, as at Finedon, Northamptonshire, the notch-head has its likeness to a face increased by the addition of ears.

MASK, BUCKLE,
OR NOTCH HEAD,
CULHAM,
YORKSHIRE.

Norman masks are interesting, as they explain some odd appearances in later work. In many churches are faces scored with lines across the cheeks, regardless of the ordinary lines of expression, in a manner closely resembling the tattoo incisions of the New Zealand warrior. This appearance, however, is simply the too faithful copying of crude Norman masks, in which the lines are meant to be the semi-circles round eyes and mouth. Moreover, the Norman heads are most often the heads of animals grinning to shew the teeth, although their general effect is that of grotesque human heads. Iffley west doorway furnishes the best example. Here we have the well-known “beak head” ornament. The semicircle and upper portion of the jambs have single heads, not two of which are exactly alike, though all closely resemble each other. They are heads of the eagle or gryphon order, with a forehead ornament very Assyrian in character. The heads of the jambs are compound, being the head of a grinning beast, probably a lion, from the mouth of which emerges a gryphon head of small size. These are sometimes called “Cat-heads,” and the gryphon head is sometimes considered (and perhaps occasionally shewn as such) a tongue. A fine doorway of beak-heads is at St. Peter’s-in-the-East, Oxford, which church was probably executed by the workmen who were responsible for Iffley.

BEAK HEADS, IFFLEY.

NORMAN MASK,
ROCHESTER.
FOLIATE MASK, EWELME.
GORILLA,
ROSLYN CHAPEL.

It is probable that the symbolism of this is the swallowing up of night by day or vice versÂ. The outer arch of the Iffley doorway consists of zodiacal signs, and at the south doorway are other designs elsewhere mentioned in this volume, far removed from Christian intent.

GORGONIC MASK,
EWELME.
FOLIATE MASK,
LINCOLN.

The grotesqueness of Norman work is almost entirely unconscious. The workers were full of Byzantine ideas, and the severe and awful was their object rather than the comic. They frequently attempted pretty detail in their symbolic designs, but in all the forms which have come from their chisels it is easy to see how incomplete an embodiment they gave to their conceptions, or rather to the conceptions of their traditional school. Norman work, beyond the Gothic, irrespective of the architectural peculiarities, has traces of its eastern origin in the classic connection of its designs. Adel Church, near Leeds, is peculiar in having co-mingled with its eastern designs more than ordinarily tangible references to ancient Keltic worship, but nearly all Norman ideographic detail concerns itself with old-world myths.

An excellent conception, well carried out, is in a mask which is one of a series of late carvings alternating with the gargoyles of Ewelme. In this, instead of leaves issuing from the mouth of the mask, there are two dragons. If those with leaves are deities, this surely must be one of the Furies. It is on the north side of the nave; on the exterior of the aisle, at the same side, other sculptures form a kind of irregular corbel-table, and special attention may be drawn to them as affording an indication of the derivation of such ornaments from the “antefixes” or decorated tiles occupying a nearly corresponding position in classic architecture.

One of those on the aisle offers a further explanation of the mark before mentioned as being on the foreheads of some masks. In this case the prominences of the eyebrows branch off into foliage. This appears also to be the intention in a capital carving in Lincoln Chapter House.

Roslyn Chapel has some very realistic heads, notably of apes or gorillas near the south doorway, of which one is drawn (opposite).

Norman work has frequently some very grotesque heads in corbel tables and tower corners, to the odd appearance of which the decay by weather has no doubt much contributed. Two examples from Sutton Courtney, Oxfordshire, illustrate this weather-worn whimsicality.

Then comes a crowd of faces which have no particular significance, being simply the outcome of the unrestrainable fun of the carver. Some are merely oddities, while others are full of life-like character.


GARGOYLE, SUTTON COURTNEY.		WEATHER-WORN NORMAN, SUTTON COURTNEY, BERKSHIRE.


HUMOUR, YORK.		MASK WITH SAUSAGE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON.		A JEALOUS EYE, YORK.

The knight with the twisted beard, from Swine, may be a portrait, and the Gargantuan-faced dominus from St. Mary’s Minster certainly is. An old barbarian head from a croche or elbow-rest at Bakewell is rude and worn, but yet bold and fine.


A BEARD WITH A TWIST, SWINE, YORKSHIRE.		A QUIZZICAL VISAGE, BAKEWELL.


GRIMACE MAKER, BEVERLEY MINSTER.		FOOL’S HEADS, BEVERLEY MINSTER.

Some of these are better than the joculators and mimes’ faces in which the artist seriously set himself a humorous task, as in the three heads (page 130) from Beverley Minster, though the latter are in some respects more grotesque.

A PORTRAIT, ST. MARY’S MINSTER.
ISLE OF THANET.
A ROUGH CHARACTER, BAKEWELL.

Another curious instance of a grimace and posture maker, assisting his countenance’s contortions by the use of his fingers, is at Dorchester Abbey. In this the artist has not been master of the facial anatomy, and shows a double pair of lips, one pair in repose, the other pulled back at the corners.

GRIMACE MAKER, DORCHESTER, OXON.

Often a grotesque face will be found added to a beautiful design of foliage, either as the conventional mask, as in the design in Lincoln Chapter House, or a realistic head, as the following grim, dour visage between graceful curves on a misericord at King’s College, Cambridge.

GRACE AND THE GRACELESS, KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

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