 |
 |
 |
|
Carpet of stone: medieval mosaic pavement revealed
Posted on Saturday, May 10, 2008 (CDT) by Isis
 The wraps have come off one of Westminster Abbey's least known treasures, a medieval marble pavement foretelling the end of the world, while conservation experts consider how to preserve the ancient stones for the next 740 years. Few modern visitors have ever seen it, although since 1268 kings and princes, queens and cardinals have walked across a symbol laden mosaic as intricate as a piece of jewellery.
It is made up of rare marbles and gemstones, including some recycled from monuments 1,000 years older, and pieces of coloured glass, set in complex allegorical patterns into a framework of Purbeck marble cut as intricately as a jigsaw puzzle. "When this floor was new it would have blazed with colour," Vanessa Simeoni, the abbey's head of conservation said. "The materials were chosen for their brilliance and shine, and the quality of the craftsmanship is actually shocking, the ultimate that could be achieved."
The mosaics are known as Cosmati work, after the four generations of a Roman family of marble workers who perfected the technique. The Westminster one, regarded as the finest north of the Alps, uniquely has an inscription boasting of its makers - and a cryptic message about the end of the world.
It was laid
in the 1260s, when Henry III sent his new Abbot of Westminster, Richard
de Ware, for talks with the Pope in Rome. The Englishman saw a newly
installed pavement in the Pope's summer residence, knew it was just the
thing for the cathedral which Henry was spectacularly rebuilding around
the tomb of St Edward the Confessor, and arrived home with a ship load
of marble, glass and Italian craftsmen. Ware's reward was his own tomb
incorporated into the design. Henry's tomb, and the saint's shrine,
were originally covered in similar work, but all the scraps of marble
and glass were picked out as sacred relics by generations of pilgrims.
Only a handful of brass
letters remains of the original long inscription, but it was
transcribed centuries ago. It names the king, the chief craftsman as
Odoricus, gives the date in a tortuous riddle, and then mysteriously
suggests that the world will last for 19,683 years, by adding together
the life spans of different animals: "add dogs and horses and men,
stags and ravens, eagles, enormous whales ...."
Careful cleaning, and a
radar survey has revealed that although the pavement bears the scars of
centuries of repairs and patching, crude and careful, most of it is
original, the rich green and plum-coloured porphyry - almost certainly
from chopped up ancient Roman sculptures and architectural fragments -
still bedded in the limestone mortar laid by the medieval craftsmen.
For most of the past 150
years it has been covered in thick layers of carpet intended to protect
but in fact just adding to the dirt and staining.
Even when the Queen was crowned above it in 1953, the royal pavement was covered over.
The two-year restoration
programme will now stabilise the pavement, so that a treasure from the
middle ages can be permanently displayed in a 21st century cathedral.
Copyright: The Guardian
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
| |
|
