Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Medieval & Renaissance, Room 10

Stall Back

1445-1449 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

This panel came from the choir stalls of the abbey of St Claude, Jura (a cathedral since 1742). The stalls were commissioned as part of the renewal of the abbey building by abbot Etienne de Fauquier. The stalls, set up in two ranges, each more than 15 metres long, to the north and south of the choir, comprised at least 44 upper and 32 lower stalls surmounted by a canopy of gothic tracery incorporating fantastic figures; in each of the arches over the backs of the higher stalls was the figure of a saint in relief.

Between 1869 and 1872, a restoration programme resulted in two pairs of stalls being sold off. One pair was purchased at auction in Paris by George Salting from the Stein collection in 1899, and passed to the Museum along with a large part of Salting's collection after his death in 1909.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Materials and techniques
Carved walnut
Brief description
French 1445-1449; Salting Bequest
Physical description
Panel of carved walnut depicting an angel carrying a shield charged with a double-headed eagle, standing on a bracket beneath a cusped and crocketed ogee arch. Above the arch is a square compartment filled with gothic tracery.
Dimensions
  • Height: 201cm
  • Width: 43.2cm
  • Depth: 4cm
  • Weight: 12.5kg
Measured for the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries 2005
Gallery label
ANGEL HOLDING A COAT OF ARMS Walnut by JEHAN DE VITRY (active 1445-1465) FRENCH; about 1449-1465 W.177-1910 Like the panel displayed nearby (W.176-1910), this comes from the choir-stalls of the Cathedral of St Claude. They may originally have been partly coloured. The remaining choir-stalls in the cathedral were damaged in a fire in 1983.(Pre-2006)
Credit line
Bequeathed by George Salting
Object history
This panel came from the choir stalls of the abbey of St Claude, Jura (a cathedral since 1742). The stalls were commissioned as part of the renewal of the abbey building by abbot Etienne de Fauquier. The stalls, set up in two ranges, each more than 15 metres long, to the north and south of the choir, comprised at least 44 upper and 32 lower stalls surmounted by a canopy of gothic tracery incorporating fantastic figures; in each of the arches over the backs of the higher stalls was the figure of a saint in relief. The misericords and the return sections at the ends of each range were carved with lively scenes of everyday life, edifying episodes from the lives of St Romain and St Lupicin and figures of animals, saints and imaginary creatures. The backs of the upper stalls had a more organised theme, depicting early abbots of St Claude, and a series of apostles and prophets. The stalls were supplied by Jean de Vitry, burgher of Geneva, as recorded in a document in the monastery archive dated 21st June 1449 for a payment of 600 florins at Costance (near Geneva) to him, for work which he had already begun on the stalls. In 1768 (Pagella) the stalls were cut down, re-arranged in a semi-circle in the apse of the choir, and covered in ochre paint. Between 1869 and 1875, a restoration programme restored the stalls in two ranges on the north and south sides of the choir, albeit somewhat to the east of their original position and without the original dividing screen between choir and nave. Heavy restoration was necessary for some portions, notably the misericords. Most importantly it seems that two pairs of return stalls which faced the sanctuary were among the fragments of woodwork not included in the new arrangement, and because there had been no place for them in the new scheme (according to a canon of the cathedral, quoted by the sacristan at a later date and recorded in an article by Conrad de Mandach in 1913) they were sold by the bishop to an antiquarian, and offered on the Paris art market around 1875, where they were said to have come from the church of Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse . One pair entered the Arconati-Visconti collection, and are now in the Louvre, Paris; the other pair were purchased at auction in Paris by George Salting from the Stein collection in 1899, and passed to the Museum in 1910 along with a large part of Salting's collection after his death in 1909. An article by Conrad de Mandach (1913) established their provenance to St Claude.

Exhibition in 2006 reunited the two panels from the V&A (W.176-1910 and W.177-1910) with two others from the Louvre. The catalogue entry (Pagella p.133) supports de Mandach's assertion that the two Louvre panels are of higher quality, though with closely shared characteristics in the drapery, wings, hair and haloes. There are differences in the angels' poses, their haloes, the form of shields and the ledges on which they stand. The two London panels share the same physique of the angels, the same frontal (slightly rigid) pose with knees slightly bent. While the architectonic decoration is precise, the hairstyle, wing feathers and drapery are less confident even clumsy at knee level, features that suggest to the exhibition curators the possibility of later intervention.
Subjects depicted
Summary
This panel came from the choir stalls of the abbey of St Claude, Jura (a cathedral since 1742). The stalls were commissioned as part of the renewal of the abbey building by abbot Etienne de Fauquier. The stalls, set up in two ranges, each more than 15 metres long, to the north and south of the choir, comprised at least 44 upper and 32 lower stalls surmounted by a canopy of gothic tracery incorporating fantastic figures; in each of the arches over the backs of the higher stalls was the figure of a saint in relief.

Between 1869 and 1872, a restoration programme resulted in two pairs of stalls being sold off. One pair was purchased at auction in Paris by George Salting from the Stein collection in 1899, and passed to the Museum along with a large part of Salting's collection after his death in 1909.
Associated object
Bibliographic references
  • Clare Graham, Two fifteenth-century stall backs from the Jura in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXXI no.1034, pp.342-45, May 1989; and review of Stalles Sculptées du XV Siècle: Genève et le Duché de Savoie, Burlington Magazine, vol.CXLII, no. 1167, June 2000, p. 377.
  • Pagella, Enrica, et al. (eds.), Corti e Città. Arte del Quattrocento nelli Alpi Occidentali, Milano : Skira, 2006 no.73, pp.117 & 33
Collection
Accession number
W.177-1910

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Record createdJune 22, 2004
Record URL
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