The Tomb Of Richard III

[poliphilo]

They dug Richard's body out of its grave under a Leicester car park in 2012- and it has lain in Leicester cathedral since 2015. The intervening three years were taken up with testing to establish his identity, wrangling over the final burial site (York and Westminster both coveted him) and designing his tomb. I always wanted Leicester to win and I believe they've done him proud.

He lies behind the central altar in a space open to the public. The stone is Swaledale granite (so Yorkshire gets a look-in) on a base of Kilkenny marble. The design by van Heningen and Haward is simple and bold, medieval in inspiration, modern in execution...

Comments

[cmcmck]

I wondering when they'll try to get Matoaka out from under that car park in Gravesend.

There'd be zero doubt about her DNA!

[poliphilo]

It needs for someone to get really fired up by the project.

The Richard excavation was driven by a Ricardian obsessive who wasn't afraid to make a nuisance of herself and have people think her barmy.

[sorenr]

It would not look out of place as a memorial for a modern-day monarch. I thought they found a very stylish and timeless solution to how to make a tomb for a medieval king and frame it in a modern language.

I'm less sure our current Queen of Denmark's future tomb monument will stand up to the test of time in terms of taste... (It has already been erected but with a sturdy wooden cover that conceals it until it will be needed.) Still, she's too much of a character for something as restrained as Richard's tomb!


(For a full resolution image: https://berlingske.bmcdn.dk/media/cache/resolve/embedded_image_600x/image/52/520873/20751804-jeve-sarkofag-roskilde-domkirke.jpg )

[poliphilo]

What a peculiar thing. Will the body be going into the see-through capsule?

[sorenr]

It's just a tomb monument, so the Queen will be interred under it. The hollowed-out shrouded figure in the glass is merely meant as a memento mori type representation of the dead.

But it certainly is peculiar - and it was quite controversial when the plans and budgets were published, but now it's standing in Roskilde Cathedral, ready for whenever she dies... It's currently covered by a temporary muti-coloured (of course!) wooden plinth with seating at the base that will remain in place until the funeral.

Interestingly it was designed as a tomb monument for the Queen AND the Prince Consort, but before his death he explicitly stated he would not like to be buried in Roskilde, the traditional burial cathedral for monarchs and their consorts, so he was eventually cremated and parts of his ashes were scattered at sea and the remainder was buried in the lawn at Fredensborg Palace. He never got comfortable playing second fiddle, and this is perhaps a reflection of that, rather than an indictment of their marriage. (He was a wonderfully baroque character, and his talents included some rather wonderful collections of poetry, some of which include very intimate, personal love poems to his wife. She would perhaps not have been such an artistic, interesting queen if she had had a more conventional husband - together they made the first published translation into Danish of Simone de Beauvoir's "Tous les hommes sont mortels", and it is indeed a very good translation!)

Sorry, it's late and I can't sleep, hence the meandering rambling...

[poliphilo]

Your royal family sound a lot more interesting than ours.

Would any of our lot even know who Simone de Beauvoir was? I very much doubt it.

[sorenr]

It's only really been two generations of interesting monarchs; before that they were pretty run-of-the-mill and the most interesting ones were the slightly mad ones - as in any monarchy, I guess. And who knows; perhaps in an absolute monarchy our queen would also have been terrible, because she IS a bit bonkers, but in a limited, constitutional monarchy that works quite well. (A boring work-horse of a queen like QE II obviously also works, but she's less fun, let's admit it.)

https://io9.gizmodo.com/margrethe-iis-illustrations-5968796
These are some of her illustrations for Lord of the Rings, and she's also done stage sets and costumes for the Royal Ballet and a few smaller TV adaptations of HC Andersen fairy tales and the likes. And for a few decades she almost seemed to have a monopoly on embroidering chasubles for cathedrals around Denmark... Because hey; she's head of the Church of Denmark and she enjoys embroidery so why not?

I have to say, I rather like her. I'm against monarchy in principle (because it makes NO sense in a modern society, of course), but while we have her I'm okay with dropping my principles and being a fan of hers. I'd like to sit next to her at a dinner party...