Dead Bishops

[poliphilo]

Three dead Bishops- as represented on their tombs in Winchester Cathedral. Winchester was the richest diocese in England- and the man who occupied its bishop's throne was ipso facto among the most powerful in the land. Wykeham and Waynflete did terms as Chancellor of England and Foxe was Lord Privy Seal.



William of Wykeham (1320ish-1404)



William Waynflete (1398-1486)



Richard Foxe (1448-1528)- a very dead bishop. This effigy shows him as a naked cadaver- and why not? Contemporaries said of him that he was Fox by name and fox by nature.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Wykeham is probably the most important of the three.

[poliphilo]

I was already aware of him as the founder of Winchester school.

[oakmouse]

Fascinating! I like Waynflete; he looks very thoughtful and intelligent.

[poliphilo]

It's a fine piece of sculpture too. Arts historians bewail the wholesale destruction of religious statuary at the Reformation but seem blind to the tombs and funerary monuments that the iconoclasts spared- and which are still there. The Wayneflete chantry chapel is a masterpiece of late medieval art- but it's almost as though it were invisible.

[oakmouse]

I've never seen it before, and as an Art History major in college I took classes that should have included it.