THE SALISBURY CHAPTER-HOUSE AND ITS OLD TESTAMENT CYCLE: AN ARCHEOLOGICAL AND ICONOGRAPHICAL STUDY

This dissertation on the Salisbury chapter-house places the building in its historical setting, from the founding of the see at the Old Sarum to completion of the 13th-c. cathedral in the new city of Salisbury. By re-evaluating technical, stylistic and documentary evidence, the study sharpens the chronology of construction for the cathedral and for the second campaign which encompassed the free-standing bell-tower, the cloisters, a consistory court, and the chapter-house. The evidence indicated that the chapter-house was planned in the 1260's but confirmed the date of 1280 for the start of construction--a date which the critical literature has had difficulty accepting.;The uses of the chapter-house and the history of the damages and repairs to the fabric and its ornament through the centuries receive attention. New information culled from cathedral archives, early prints and drawings, and also observations of travelers, antiquarians and architects from the 17th c. forward establish the condition of the building, its glass and sculpture up to the eve of the restoration of 1855.;Every aspect of that restoration is examined, but the study focuses on the restoration of the sixty Old Testament scenes. Again recorded observations and pre-restoration drawings provide documentation that supplements and corroborates the detailed archaeological examination made of each spandrel scene in the biblical cycle. Every carved inset, all areas recut or sanded as well as restorations made with mastic, mortar or cement are indicated in diagrams superimposed upon photographs. Each scene is assessed for the accuracy of its iconography as restored. Where the restorer had excised all vestiges of the original carving, iconographical relationships between the Salisbury scenes and other Old Testament cycles, especially those in English manuscripts, helped to evaluate the restoration. Although aware of the impact of the restoration on the 13th-c. style, the critical literature had not anticipated the numerous, unintentional deviations from the 13th-c. iconography.;The study identifies the characteristics of the hands of two 13th-c. artists and their affinities with French sculpture of the 1270's and 1280's. The Salisbury sculptors, whether first hand or through portable objects, possibly Parisian ivories, were conversant with aesthetic ideas expressed at Amiens, at Reims and in Paris. The Salisbury spandrel carvings also reflect the intellectual climate of the 13th c. by providing a visual counterpart for the renewed interest of theologians in the historical as opposed to the typological content of the Old and New Testaments. Again the Salisbury scenes lie in the French tradition of the 2nd half of the 13th c. when biblical narrative sequences proliferated in relief sculptures on portals and choir screens.;The iconographical program proposed here for the Salisbury chapter-house embraces both the sculpture of the inner entrance and the Old Testament cycle in the spandrels of the blind arcade, as well as the figural and heraldic designs in the glass. As a whole they represent the vision of the apocalyptic Second Coming with its promise of salvation through the establishment of the New Law by the Church Triumphant.