The Corpus of Medieval Narrative Art

 

Now on-line (2,931 pages);

And for something completely different;

 

This Website is a repository for photographs of medieval art. Since my doctoral research interest was visual narratology, the emphasis here is very much on narrative art, particularly in stained glass and portal sculpture. Currently it is only possible to view the images by browsing the links given above. In due course I will augment this with thematic/iconographic searches as well. If you have any queries, please feel free to contact me at;

       sw 'at' flat3.co.uk

All images on this site are © Dr Stuart Whatling unless otherwise indicated but I freely grant license for anybody to use these images for any legitimate academic purpose. Let me know if you need higher-resolution images for publication. Commercial usage is strictly prohibited.

Despite the similarity in web address this site is not associated with the International Centre for Medieval Art (ICMA) in New York - if you got here by mistake whilst looking for them, please go to; www.medievalart.org

Poitiers choir stalls, spandrel 20 - an architect with his tools
Bourges Cathedral, Bay 06 (The Passion) Panel 11 - the Last Supper
Chartres Cathedral, Bay 08, panel 07 - the Prefect Tarquinus chokes on a fish-bone Rouen Cathedral, North Transept Portal, Quatrefoil 09:04 (monster with the lower half of a cockatrice and the upper half of a doctor examining a urine flask)

Update History;

Recent Changes:

11/12/12 - The last of Angers - Bay 103a - Life of St Laurence.
10/12/12 - Something new for Angers - the Jesse Tree in Bay 103b.
06/12/12 - Reloaded Angers bay 107a (St Peter).
04/12/12 - Reloaded Angers bay 107b (St Eloi) with better images.
06/11/12 - Reloaded Angers bay 102b (St Martin) with better images.
02/11/12 - Reloaded Angers bay 102a (St Maurille) with better images.
01/11/12 - Reloaded Angers bay 108a (Thomas Becket) and bay 108b (John the Baptist) with better images.
31/10/12 - Reloaded Angers bay 123 (Death of the Virgin) and bay 125 (St Catherine) with better images.
30/10/12 - Reloaded Angers bay 121 (St Vincent) with better images.
26/10/12 - STOP PRESS! Having nearly finished Angers Cathedral with lousy photos from my 2006 visit I've just realised that I went back there and shot much better images in March 2009 - so now I need to re-do all those pages with the better photos. Ho hum... I suppose it's a reflection on how exhausting those research trips were that I'd completely forgotten about my second visit to Angers.
22/10/12 - And another St Martin window - Bay 102b - St Martin of Tours
19/10/12 - A local Angevin bishop-saint - Bay 102a - St Maurille of Angers
17/10/12 - First of the Angers St Martin windows - originally in the west facade but now in Bay 104.
12/10/12 - Another window about St Thomas Becket - Angers Bay 108a
10/10/12 - Uploaded Angers Bay 100b - The Infancy of Christ
09/10/12 - Uploaded Angers Bay 100a - The Passion
03/10/12 - Pretty awful photos I'm afraid but such as they are, here's Bay 101 - Life of St Julien of Le Mans
25/09/12 - Two more late 12th century windows from Angers; Bay 123 - Death of the Virgin and 125 - St Catherine
24/09/12 - Uploaded Angers bay 121 (St Vincent) and corrected a few more post-migration 'file not found' errors
05/09/12 - Started uploading the Angers Cathedral windows
05/09/12 - Major file reorganisation and renaming exercise to prepare for future changes - sorry if I broke anyone's links but it needed doing!
03/09/12 - Finishing the axial chapel at Chartres with St Paul in Bay 04.
29/08/12 - Summer break over - time for another half-window from Chartres; Bay 02 - St Andrew.
26/04/12 - Another enigmatic window to finish off Poitiers;The Parable of the Overseer (Mat 20:1-16)
26/04/12 - Down to my last two Poitiers windows, starting with Bay 114a - The Parable of the Steward?
23/04/12 - Last of the 12th century (but heavily restored) windows at Poitiers;Bay 102 - Saints Peter and Paul
18/04/12 - One of the earlier windows at Poitiers;Bay 101 - St Laurence
16/04/12 - More of Genesis;Poitiers Bay 105a - Isaac
12/04/12 - Another couple of rarely depicted Old Testament stories from Genesis 19-20; Poitiers Bay 105b - Lot / Abraham
10/04/12 - Some more fragments of Exodus - Poitiers Bay 113a
03/04/12 - Poitiers Cathedral's trickiest conundrum so far - Bay 113b with its odd mixture of panels from Exodus and the Life of St Blaise
28/03/12 - ...and for my second Poitevin parable, Bay 112a - Dives and Lazarus
23/03/12 - I need a break from unravelling fragmentary Old Testament stories so it's time for a couple of parables, Poitiers style - firstly Bay 112b - the Prodigal Son
20/03/12 - Another rare bit of iconography, again from the book of Numbers - Bay 118b - Balaam (alas no ass!)
13/03/12 - The book of Numbers - Bay 118a (Moses part 2).
13/03/12 - Another very confusing window from Poitiers - the first half of the Book of Joseph.
07/03/12 - Having finished with Tours, it's time for Poitiers - starting with the second half of the Book of Joseph.
03/03/12 - Uploaded the last of the Tours windows - Bay 200 - The Passion.
01/03/12 - Uploaded Tours Bay 202 - The Tree of Jesse and the Infancy of Christ.
29/02/12 - Uploaded Tours Bay 203 - the life of St Peter.
24/02/12 - Uploaded Tours Bay 204 - the life of St Martin.
21/02/12 - Uploaded Tours Bay 209 - the life of St Nicholas.
16/02/12 - Uploaded Tours Bay 210 - the life of St James.
13/02/12 - Uploaded Tours Bay 211 - the lives of St Denis and St Vincent.
09/02/12 - Another Tours window - Bay 212 - the lives of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist.
03/02/12 - Another Eustace window to join the ones at Sens, Chartres and Le Mans - Tours cathedral Bay 214.
31/01/12 - Well, that's enough of Chartres for a while - back to Tours Cathedral, starting with Bay 208 - The Life of St Martial.
26/01/12 - And one more clerestory window - Bay 133 - St Giles / St George. Not great images but included for completeness.
26/01/12 - Last of the 12th century lancets at Chartres - Bay 49 - The Tree of Jesse
25/01/12 - Another clerestory window - Chartres bay 141 - Temptations of Christ / Three Prophets
20/01/12 - First of the big rose windows - Chartres bay 121 (the North Transept Rose)
12/01/12 - Another of the 12th century Chartres windows - bay 51 (the Passion)
10/01/12 - Uploaded Chartres bay 46 - Life of St Mary Magdalen
04/01/12 - Uploaded Chartres bay 45 (St Lubin)
22/12/11 - Uploaded Chartres bay 38 (Miracles of the Virgin). Sadly mostly modern but a few interesting survivals
19/12/11 - Not my best photographs by a long chalk but such as they are, there's Chartres bay 37 (Typological Passion)
15/12/11 - Uploaded Chartres bay 30a - Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere (includes the temptations of Christ and the wedding at Cana).
07/12/11 - Chartres bay 28a - Labours of the Months / Signs of the Zodiac
01/12/11 - Uploaded Chartres bay 36 - The mysterious melange of Canon Theirry's Grisaille, St Apollinaris and the Celestial Hierarchy
25/11/11 - In plenty of time for Christmas... Uploaded Chartres bay 50 - The Infancy of Christ (the 'Incarnation' window)
21/11/11 - Uploaded Chartres bay 30b - The Life of St Anthony of the Desert
09/11/11 - another of the Chartres St Nicholas windows - bay 39
05/11/11 - OK, that was another long delay... but Chartres Bay 20 (St Martin) is now up! Now able to work on laptop on the train so should be more coming soon...
21/01/11 - Uploaded Chartres Bay 16 (Lives of St Margaret and St Catherine)
14/01/11 - Uploaded Chartres Bay 12 (St Remigius)
12/01/11 - Just for a bit of variety, uploaded my PhD thesis
11/01/11 - Uploaded Chartres Bay 05 (Life of St James the Greater)
12/12/10 - Bit of a long delay but finally found some time to upload Tours bay 213 (St Thomas and St Stephen)
01/05/10 - Uploaded Tours Cathedral bay 201 (St Maurice and the Theban Legion)
18/04/10 - Uploaded Chartres bay 48 (St John the Evangelist)
09/04/10 - Uploaded Chartres bay 116 (clerestory window with St Denis handing over the Oriflamme) and 29a (St Germain d'Auxerre)
01/04/10 - Having finally finished my PhD I can now resume work on this...
15/01/10 - Uploaded the remaining 78 Portail des Libraires quatrefoils (right of doorway)
14/01/10 - Uploaded first batch of 82 pics of Rouen Cathedral's north transept portal (Portail des Libraires) - all the quatrefoils to left of doorway
07/01/10 - Uploaded the Bourges west facade Genesis cycle
18/12/09 - Uploaded Chartres bay 47 (Noah)
04/12/09 - The uploading of the four early 13th century windows in the north aisle of the choir at Sens now complete
20/11/09 - Uploaded the remaining 24 quatrefoils from the Amiens west facade
17/11/09 - For a bit of variety... some sculpture. Uploaded the Amiens Cathedral west facade prophet cycle, virtues/vices and zodiac/labours quatrefoils (94 pages)
13/11/09 - Uploaded Chartres bay 44 (The Good Samaritan/Genesis typological window)
05/11/09 - Uploaded the first of the windows at Tours Cathedral - the Genesis window
04/11/09 - Apologies for the hiatus but I've got about 80k words to write by March as well as 3 lectures and 2 conferences to organise, so everything else is on hold...
08/09/09 - Uploaded Chartres bay 01 ( The Lives of St Simon and St Jude)
02/09/09 - Uploaded Chartres bay 0 (Lives of the Apostles)
01/09/09 - Uploaded Chartres bay 21 (Life of St Julien the Hospitaller)
08/08/09 - Uploaded Chartes bay 07 (Legends of Charlemagne) .
11/05/09 - Uploaded Chartres bay 115 (St Eustace/infancy clerestory window).
21/03/09 - Replaced the photos for Poitiers bays 111a + b with much better ones from the latest trip.
19/03/09 - Uploaded first of the new batch of windows - Chartres clerestory bay 142 (St Mary of Egypt and St Laumer).
09/03/09-17/03/09 - Rather frenetic week in France photographing further windows at Chartres, Tours, Angers, Le Mans, Poitiers, Auxerres & Sens. Will try to get the resulting 4525 photos sorted, post-processed, indexed, researched and uploaded over the course of this summer.
29/02/09 - Uploaded Chartres Bay 28b (Life of the Virgin) plus clerestory bays 105 and 109.
25/02/09 - Chartres bays 41 (Joseph) uploaded - another nice sharp set of images. Also the first of the Clerestory windows - Bay 103 with the amazin Seraph image.
23/02/09 - In response to feedback, am changing the Bourges pages et alia so that links always open in the same window.
23/02/09 - Chartres bays 18 (St Thomas Becket) and 23 (Thomas the Apostle in India) uploaded - the latter has some of my best quality glass photos to date.
18/02/09 - Chartres bay 17 (Saints Savinien and Potentien) uploaded
27/01/09 - Poitiers bays 100, 111a, 111b and 120 uploaded.
21/01/09 - need to get my 2006 pics of the Poitiers windows sorted for the PhD so might as well stick them up here too...
15/12/08 - finished uploading pics from the 2007 Harvard/Courtauld Grad student trip to Saxony
22/10/08 - uploaded Chartres bay 43 (St Eustace) and bay 15 (St Cheron)
10/10/08 - uploaded Chartres bay 14 (The life and posthumous miracles of St Nicholas)
08/10/08 - uploaded Chartres bay 13 (The life and relics of St Stephen)
02/10/08 - uploaded Chartres bay 11 (St Pantaleon) - quite a confusing narrative sequence so will revisit this one soon!
28/09/08 - started the Chartres pages & uploaded bay 08 (St Sylvester)
26/09/08 - le Mans clerestory windows uploaded
17/09/08 - Added le Mans bays 104, 106 & 108 - thereby completing the initial load of the triforium windows. (At last!)
15/09/08 - Added le Mans bay 100 and 101
12/09/08 - Added le Mans bay 102 (Life of St Eustace)
01/09/08 - Added the Poitiers choir-stall carvings (Images only - commentary text to come later)
24/08/08 - Added bare bones of the 'Le Mans upper windows' section
20/08/08 - Site created. Migrated the Bourges section from www.flat3.co.uk to here and created new home page (this one).