Teesdale link with Italian picture (From Darlington and Stockton Times)

Teesdale link with Italian picture

11:55am Friday 5th February 2010

• Print
• Email
• Share

ONE of the oldest and most intriguing paintings at the Bowes Museum is the focal point of a new display which taps into the theological protest that led to the Reformation in Europe – and reveals a link with Teesdale.

A Miracle of the Sacrament, painted in Siena, Italy, by the artist Sassetta in about 1423, shows a cleric being struck dead as he is offered the host during mass, while a devil swoops down to snatch his soul.

The little painting was once part of a large altarpiece comprising 23 separate pictures telling a complex story in homage to the Virgin Mary, saints and prophets.

It promoted the traditional belief that bread and wine shared during communion turns into the real flesh and blood of Jesus.

This idea had begun to be challenged, and two of the altarpiece panels allude to John Wycliffe, a lay preacher and early dissident, who was from Teesdale, and Jan Huss, of Bohemia.

Both were declared heretics by the Council of Constance in 1415.

Wycliffe had died from a stroke while hearing mass in the parish church of Lutterworth in 1384.

In 1428, at the command of Pope Martin V, his remains were dug up, burned and the ashes cast into the River Swift, which flows through Lutterworth.

Some time between 1790 and 1840, the altarpiece was dismembered and dispersed, possibly after damage in an earthquake.

“All knowledge of the artist, the subject of the painting and the circumstances of its creation were lost during this period,” said the museum’s former curator Elizabeth Conran. “It has taken art historians 100 years to retrieve its story.”

The panel alluding to the death of Wycliffe ended up in the collection at the Bowes. The exhibition, telling the story of the altarpiece though a scale photographic reconstruction, is on show until March 7, after which A Miracle of the Sacrament goes on loan to an exhibition in Siena, Italy.

Also on show are other paintings and church plate from the collections and a posthumous portrait of John Wycliffe on loan from St Mary’s Church at Wycliffe.

• Print
• Email
• Share