FOUR 
FOUR While little is known of the Pontifical or Psalter’s original respective owners, a lot is known about the original owner of the painting considered in this chapter. The Wilton Diptych was owned by Richard II, king of England from 1377 to 1399. Richard almost certainly commissioned the Diptych and discussed its subject-matter with the painter, whose identity is unknown. Before looking at the images, some biographical detail is in order. Richard’s life was recorded by a number of early chroniclers, all of whom had their own agendas and disagreed on some details. Shakespeare used several of their accounts to construct one of his most lyrical tragic heroes. The following brief summary draws on early chronicles, Shakespeare’s fictional synthesis and the work of modern historians.1
Richard was born in Bordeaux on 6 January 1367, the feast of the Epiphany, which commemorates the coming of the Magi. As an adult, he was understandably fond of recalling that his birth was attended by three kings – those of Spain, Navarre and Portugal. When Richard was nine, his father, the Black Prince, died and the following year his grandfather, Edward III, fell ill. Upon Edward’s death, Richard succeeded to the throne on 22 June 1377, around the feast day of St John the Baptist. He was just ten and a half years old. According to Shakespeare, Richard came to consider his role on earth as England’s sovereign to be his God-given right and responsibility.2 Modern historians reinforce that view by saying that he justified his privileges and found support for his trials by drawing parallels between his own life and examples from history, religion and myth, seeing parallels between his birth and the birth of Christ and probably expecting to die as a martyr.3
He came to power before adolescence; his court had many advisers and favourites and was characterized by base flattery and foolish extravagance.4 Richard’s first decade as a monarch must have been fun, but it was difficult, in large part because the English political system was ill-equipped to deal with a child-king.5 Maintaining his court required heavy taxation which, in the aftermath of the Black Death, was deeply unpopular and led to the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. Thus, at the age of fourteen, Richard had to face down an angry mob in the streets of London to restore a fragile peace. The following year, he married Anne of Bohemia and the high living continued. As such, his popularity declined even further. Military engagements in Scotland marked a coming of age in 1385 but his unrelenting extravagance prompted a review of royal finances and some of his ministers were dismissed, impeached and imprisoned. Deposition was threatened in 1387, but by the end of 1388, power had begun to swing back in his favour. He was 21, starting to find his feet, and by his mid-twenties, his court was becoming an important cultural centre. He supported painters and poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer.6 Richard also engaged in numerous building projects (some supervised by Chaucer, as Clerk of Works) and funded the reconstruction of Westminster Abbey’s nave.7 In 1394, when Richard was 27, Anne of Bohemia died. Grief-stricken, he completely destroyed the palace in which she had met her death.8 The following year, he commissioned the tomb he intended to share with her in Westminster Abbey. It was probably around the same time that he commissioned the Diptych.
Hence, the Diptych was made for a man who was not yet 30, who governed a troubled kingdom and had just lost his wife. He had to come to terms with discord in his realm and the death of his beloved. The painting can be seen as a heartfelt response to political and personal trials. The left-hand panel recognizes Richard’s spiritual allegiances – the three kings mark his birthday, St John the Baptist acknowledges the date of his coronation, and Edward the Confessor refers to the holy relics and royal cult in Westminster. The inclusion of St Edmund, a martyred king, hints at Richard’s political troubles and possibly also at a sense of his own probable fate.
Within a few years of commissioning the Diptych, Richard’s rule suddenly descended into tyranny and a power struggle ensued with his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke. By September 1399, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and was transferred to Pontefract Castle before Christmas. At Epiphany, on his 33rd birthday, his supporters rose up but were quelled. He was almost certainly dead by St Valentine’s Day, 1400, but exactly how he died is a mystery. Holinshed’s Chronicles, written over 150 years later, gave three different accounts. One said that Richard was hacked to death by Sir Pierce of Exton. (This was the fate Shakespeare chose as a suitably dramatic finale for his Richard II.) Another account said that he escaped from Pontefract to end his days peacefully as a hermit in Scotland. However, most modern historians favour Holinshed’s third option – that Richard was starved to death in Pontefract Castle.9
From an early age, life would have helped prepare Richard for death. After all, his father’s tomb reminded him that ‘I once was as you now are and now am as you will be’. Art also shaped attitudes towards death. In ‘The Monk’s Tale’, for example, Richard’s court poet catalogued how the mighty fall, from Lucifer to Adam to King Peter of Spain (alongside whom Richard’s father fought and who was stabbed to death by his brother) and the Duke of Milan (a personal acquaintance of Chaucer’s who died in prison in 1385). Indeed, as Richard waited for death in Pontefract, he may have recalled another episode from ‘The Monk’s Tale’ in which Count Ugolino also starved to death in prison. If so, then Richard would have considered his own fate to be preferable, since Ugolino had to watch as his sons – the youngest of whom was only three – starved alongside him.10
23 The Wilton Diptych (outer panels), c. 1395–9, egg tempera on oak, each 53 × 37 cm (21¼ × 14¾ in).
24 The Wilton Diptych (outer panels), c. 1395–9, egg tempera on oak, each 53 × 37 cm (21¼ × 14¾ in).
This chapter focuses on the Diptych’s two inner images, but the outer pair – a coat of arms and a white hart – say something about the object’s use (illus. 24). When displayed, the Diptych stood upright like a large, open birthday card, so damages to the coat of arms probably occurred when it was closed and in transit. When taken from its place on a temporary altar, it would have been carefully wrapped and packed for travelling. Whatever precautions were taken, the coat of arms image was repeatedly rubbed. It may have been pressed up against a horse’s flank while on the road.
Together, Richard and the painter determined that two hinged pieces of oak would satisfy the basic material needs of a portable altarpiece. However, a diptych is an uncommon format. Single images or triptychs, with a central panel and two smaller wings that fold across to protect the central image, are much more common. It is highly unlikely that the most common forms of devotional paintings have one or three images by accident. It is equally unlikely that the Diptych’s two images were created without knowing the symbolic consequences. The format made the portable altarpiece like a manuscript that could be propped open to read, but making it with two – as opposed to one or three pieces of wood – determined how the finished work would be appreciated before any pigments were prepared or paintbrushes picked up.
The medieval attitude towards numbers had its origins in Greek philosophy, which used numbers to resolve multiplicity into unity. Its application to the Christian tradition is obvious – the number one represents, above all else, unity or God. By definition, unity is everything. One is the principle that underlies all numbers and, as such, it was not considered to be a number in itself. As Hermes said, ‘because it is a beginning … [one] contains every number, is contained by none, and generates every number’.11
At first sight, being ‘contained by none’ seems wrong. Quantitatively, one is contained in every number – twice in two, three times in three, and so forth – but Hermes referred to the qualitative aspect, which is unity and which must indeed contain all.12 One is like the mathematical point that defines all space but itself occupies no space.13 Also, in generating every number, one must be both odd and even.14 Three is the first exclusively odd number. In fact, three is the first ‘real’ number because it contains a beginning, middle and an end.15 The central presence of the third element acts as a mediator between the beginning and the end (the alpha and omega) and thus creates a balance, like the centre of a see-saw.16 Albertus Magnus said that the number three is in all things and that it ‘signifies the trinity of natural phenomena’.17 Hence, in altarpieces, a triptych immediately reflects the Trinity in its physical structure, whilst a single panel reflects unity, or God. Both the usual formats for small devotional paintings have an odd number of images. And, as Shakespeare said,
… good luck lies in odd
numbers … They say there is divinity in
odd numbers, either in nativity, chance or death.18
But the Diptych has two panels, which – according to the ancient tradition alluded to by Shakespeare – is a potentially unlucky number. While one is unchanging, the number two is changeable and has no centre. It is associated with diversity and the root of all division, starting the move away from unity and order towards multiplicity and chaos.19 Above all, the number two implies the existence of something other than ‘the One’.20 It was therefore associated with sin. Bartholomaeus Anglicus called it ‘infamous’, yet said its sin was counterbalanced by sharing the honour of its neighbours, one and three.21
So the number two was not all bad. Moreover, in its favourable aspect, it was the mother of all numbers, with one being the father; odd numbers were their sons and even numbers were their daughters.22 At this point, having acknowledged that numbers have sexes, we might ask whether it is reasonable to expect a medieval painter or panel maker to know such philosophical details.
In fact, ordinary carpenters did know that number one could be male and number two female. (On its own, the number one was androgynous, just as Adam was androgynous before Eve’s creation. God made Adam both ‘male and female’23, so Adam became of one sex only when the removal of a rib made him incomplete.24) Evidence comes from everyday timber-framed houses where the roof ridge is sometimes supported by one vertical timber, called a ‘king post’, and sometimes by two vertical timbers, called ‘queen posts’.25
Since humble housebuilders were evidently touched by the philosophy of number, someone who made altarpieces for kings should really know their numbers. The Diptych’s carpenter – who may or may not have been the same person as the painter – measured an oak plank, cut it in two, then carved and joined the pieces. In so doing, they followed a divine pattern. After all, if the painters’ prototype was St Luke, then carpenters followed the earthly vocation of Christ, the carpenter.26 St Augustine said that ‘God has arranged all things in number and measure’27 and ‘if you seek the strength which moves the hand of the artist, it will be number.’28 Carpenters measure things, but in the Middle Ages, numbers provided much more than just a basis for counting.
According to St Bonaventure, numbers give clues to the divine purpose of Nature. In art, they ‘express beautiful and well-proportioned things’ thanks to the ‘appropriate actions of the [artist’s] body’ that are inspired by impressions received from ‘eternal reason or judicial numbers’.29 When cutting this particular piece of wood, the ‘appropriate actions of the [carpenter’s] body’ were guided by a proportion known as the square root of two. This elegant proportion is very easy to make, and its ease upon the eye and ease of execution are both proofs that it embodies an aspect of the ‘eternal reason’.30 The square root of two harmoniously links the height and width of each panel and governs the dimensions of the fully extended pair of panels too.
Therefore, each of the wings enjoys the same proportion as the whole, partially overcoming the Diptych’s potentially ‘unlucky’ number. Nonetheless, a devotional painting with two panels still poses a challenge, as its divided form does not immediately evoke the unity of God or the Trinity. It has no centre to resolve tension between the wings and its structure could evoke sin – hardly a promising framework for an object of contemplation. Quite why Richard and the carpenter should choose an unlucky, infamous or diabolical number of images is a riddle. There is no attempt to provide a unified image for the eye to rest upon, so the eye sometimes focuses on one image, sometimes on the other. The Diptych presents a dichotomy. In fact, it presents another angle on the very same dichotomy that the Psalter’s painters played with. They were interested in form (or workmanship) and matter (or pigments) as representatives of the invisible realm of ideas (or heaven) and the visible realm of objects (or earth). Richard’s portable altarpiece is another meditation on the relationship between heaven and earth.
Even before the painter touched the Diptych, the carpenter had already suggested that the relationship between heaven and earth was mysterious. This is because the proportion that guided the carpenter – the square root of two – is strictly speaking unknown and unknowable. For Aristotle, it was a source of wonder and it came to be called an ‘incommensurable’ number.31 The chosen ratio means that if the width of a panel conforms to an exact measurement, then its height cannot be measured exactly. By using the square root of two, the carpenter constructed Richard’s aid to meditation with a very subtle and understated quandary – exact knowledge about the width of the earth does not help us know the height of heaven. (This is why the author of The Cloud of Unknowing said his mystic text was not for ‘the merely curious’.)
King posts and queen posts in lofts and incommensurable proportions in altarpieces suggest that woodworking could be approached in a manner appropriate for those who followed Christ’s worldly vocation. And clues to the significance of the carpenter’s essential material are not hard to find. The Latin for ‘wood’ is lignum, which means ‘collected’ or ‘gathered together’, since trees are naturally found close to each other. The word may share the same root as ‘religion’, which aims to re-join, or regather souls, or to re-bind the soul to God. Other words that share the same root are ‘ligature’, something that binds, and legere, which means ‘read’. The activity of reading involves joining or gathering ‘legible’ signs, and, of course, the ‘word’ itself is logos. Words were written on ‘leaves’ and the process of converting them into a manuscript was called legato, the full significance of which was appreciated by Dante who said that the leaves were ‘bound up by love’.32
Of course, the medieval word was written with ink made from oak galls gathered from the woods, and when a larger part of a tree is removed from the wood, it is called a ‘log’. So the portable altarpiece upon which Richard meditated looked like leaves in an open manuscript and was actually an elaborately divided and re-joined log. To compensate for the Diptych’s unlucky number of images, the carpenter, or ‘joiner’, followed Christ’s example – ‘I join two sticks … the Cross saves and makes one.’33
Richard is depicted on earth enjoying a vision of heaven and this chapter will follow his example, focusing on the right-hand panel after briefly considering the left-hand panel (illus. 25, 26). The Diptych’s two inner images are not particularly well balanced. The right-hand, ‘heavenly’, panel is filled with numerous figures spilling out of, and cut off by, the frame. The left-hand, ‘earthly’ panel is rather empty, with four disconnected figures in a sparse landscape. This visual imbalance reinforces the riddle of divided images by increasing the tension between them. But the Diptych’s imbalance is merely a restatement of the relationship implied by the Psalter’s painters with their exuberant imagination and impoverished palette. The relationship between heaven and earth that the Psalter’s patron and painters meditated upon as a private joke is shared more openly here – no scientific equipment is needed to decipher it. On the right, the painter makes the invisible mind of God overflow with inexhaustible richness, while, on the left, he or she shows the visible world as a pale copy of God’s plenitude, which we see ‘as through a glass darkly’.34
The earthly panel shows four distinct figures made up of three saints and three kings. Standing, from the left, are St and King Edmund, St and King Edward and St John the Baptist; kneeling in front of them is King Richard. On earth, the three saints present the king to heaven. Given that the Diptych contrasts heaven and earth, it is significant that the earthly panel has four figures. This is because the earth is made up of groups of four such as the cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) and seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter).
The earthly panel contains little more than the four figures, who seem to be in a barren landscape. The only feature is a rock terrace at the edge of a wood or forest. Forest edges traditionally mark the margins of civilization and, appropriately, the forest is depicted on the margin of the earthly panel. As the Psalter showed, margins were populated with monsters, so when Bottom went into the woods to play Pyramus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, he sprouted an ass’s head.35
It was suggested by John Marwood in the seventeenth century that the word ‘forest’ came from the Latin fera (wild animal) and statio (dwelling). Forests are then ‘for the rest and abode of beasts’.36 Forests may be dangerous places in which animals rested and in which fairies transformed innocent thespians, but they were also a sanctuary for lovers and those who stood outside the law.37 The outlaw in the woods was not necessarily a lawbreaker, since he or she might strive to abide by laws above the corrupt laws of the land, as did Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Robin was a Lord of Misrule, and his forests were places where things were not always as they seemed, where right could be wrong and wrong, right.38 Forests were places of disguise, of inversion, where everyday categories could be confused and much of their perceived danger was due to the suspension of familiar laws. Forest laws might break with everyday laws of decorum but they nonetheless conform to higher laws, like the Psalter’s apparently perverse but cosmologically legitimate marginalia.
Those who went into the woods to escape civilization sought seclusion and included those with spiritual aspirations, like holy men and alchemists.39 No forest was complete ‘without a resident hermit’.40 Forests were places of divine Justice and Mercy, mixed environments that reflected the wayfarers’ inner mixtures of virtues and vices.41 They rested and tested people. The Diptych’s painter knew this, because he or she chose to put the forest on the earthly panel’s heavenly margin. It is squeezed in near the hinges and its position is significant, since the passage to heaven involves leaving behind the familiarity of everyday rules, as will be explored in the final chapter. The Diptych’s painter used the forest-in-the-middle to allude to the spiritual journey, as Dante did in his Divine Comedy, where the journey to Paradise started ‘half-way along’ the path of life when the poet entered a ‘dark wood’.42 By starting his journey from a wood, Dante played with the same idea as the Psalter’s and Diptych’s painters. He knew that the Greek for ‘wood’ was hyle and that hyle represented ‘matter’. His journey was therefore started with matter, the lowest part of the universe, and went to form, the highest.43
25 Wilton Diptych, detail; the inner, ‘earthly’ left-hand panel.
26 Wilton Diptych, detail; the inner, ‘heavenly’ right-hand panel.
The Diptych’s painter reminded Richard that, for some, forests were the closest one could get to heaven on earth. For example, at the very end of the Arthurian cycle, after his adulterous affair with Queen Guinevere and redeeming chivalrous adventures, Lancelot disappeared into a forest. There, he spent four years lost in prayer, then four days of sickness, to be transported to heaven on the fifth day.44
Everything on the earthly panel alludes to heaven and the heavenly panel contains prefigurations of the earthly. Squeezed in near the hinges on the heavenly panel, at the very top of a flagpole, is a tiny depiction of an island in a silvery sea. This island is being entrusted to Richard by an angel following the Christ Child’s instruction. It is probably England. (The flag seems to reinforce the island’s identity since we now interpret the red cross on a white field as English, after the flag of England’s patron, St George, although at the time of painting, England’s patron was St Edward and the flag referred to Christ’s resurrection.) Other references to the earthly in heaven are the white hart badges worn by angels showing their allegiance to Richard.
Thus, each panel contains references to the other, binding them together and visually reinforcing the physical hinges. But the difference between the panels – heaven’s fullness and earth’s emptiness – is emphasized by the painter’s subtle use of pigments. Richard was almost certainly involved in discussions about the Diptych before it was painted, but for those who were not privy to those discussions, quiet contemplation reveals a significant difference between heavenly painting and earthly painting.
The painter did not use more pigments in heaven and fewer on the earth, as the Psalter’s painters might have done. Nor did they use cheap ones on earth and expensive ones in heaven, as the Pontifical’s painter may have done. In the Diptych, the same pigments are on both panels. On the earthly panel, however, they are in small, isolated patches – St Edmund’s robe is blue and gold, Edward’s was red (although it has since faded), St John’s is brown and Richard’s is red and gold. By contrast, the heavenly panel seems to be painted in broad, continuous sweeps of colour: the background is gold, there is a band of black-and-white wings, the Virgin and angels’ robes are blue and they all stand on a dark-green ground.
Two particular colours dominate the Diptych’s heavenly panel – gold and blue. In a king’s personal altarpiece, it should come as no surprise that the gold is real (there is none of the Psalter’s mosaic gold) and the blue is ultramarine (there is none of the Pontifical’s azurite). And the painter used ultramarine and gold in complete sympathy with their material natures so that the Diptych’s beauty is, in large part, due to the way the heavenly panel reflects the ideal towards which the earth naturally strives.
Richard would have known the traditional adage, ‘beauty is the splendour of the true’. Beauty was the mysterious hallmark that guaranteed the authenticity of an experience in a world of potentially illusory appearances. If Richard was touched by the Diptych’s beauty, then he would have taken that feeling as a proof that the Diptych was in some way ‘true’, just as today’s mathematicians, scientists or engineers recognize the correct solution to a problem by its beauty.45 Its ‘truth’ is in its proportions and in its materials. Even if Richard was not involved in choosing pigments when commissioning the Diptych, after contemplating it, he would certainly have seen the way in which the painter was true to their materials, as understood in terms of Aristotle’s four elements. Richard would have believed that all natural movement on earth was driven by elemental desires. He knew, for example, that rain fell because water’s true home was below the air and ‘gravity’ was an expression of its desire to go home. He also knew that springs rose because water’s true home was above the earth and ‘levity’ again helped it to return there. And he knew that water would comfortably settle, neither rising nor falling, if left undisturbed ‘in its element’.
It may take a while to make the connections between elements in the outside world and the elements in the Diptych, but the painter put clues in the painting for anyone to discover, to add to the pleasure of meditation. In the context of the Pontifical, it was noted that every detail of Cennini’s recipe for making ultramarine could be explained by Aristotle’s elements. However, the principles that underlie that recipe have been forgotten in the West over the last few centuries, so a brief summary is necessary before the Diptych can be appreciated as if through Richard’s eyes.
According to ancient science, all of heaven is made from aether and heaven’s single element is a material reflection of its inherent unity. But aether is not found on earth, so the Diptych’s depiction of heaven has to allude to the celestial fifth element by using the four terrestrial elements. Although the four elements are attributed to Aristotle, he got most of what he knew from Plato, who in turn got most of what he knew from the Pythagorean tradition. The theory of four (or five) elements almost certainly arose in the East.46
When the theory first came to the West, it was a closely guarded secret, revealed only to those who had proved themselves spiritually qualified to receive it. Knowledge of the elements gave power over them – Pythagoras was said to control wild beasts and predict earthquakes – so great care was taken to keep the knowledge from those who might abuse it.47 However, by the time of Aristotle, some of the elements’ secrets had leaked out and those who had rational knowledge of them busily set about discrediting the memory of those who – like Parmenides and Empedocles – also possessed the elements’ more mystical secrets.
The elements themselves came from God, and, like the light from a candle, they became weaker with distance from their source. Aether, being the heavenly material, is closer to God and is strong, capable of supporting the whole heavenly reality on its own. But the four elements that make up everything beneath the orbit of the moon (the earth’s traditional boundary) are further from God and can be thought of as different, divided and weak, fragments of aether. Heaven’s unity is alluded to by the Diptych’s right-hand panel’s continuous sweeps of colour. The diversity of the four earthly elements is reflected in its left-hand panel, with its separate patches of colour.
The four terrestrial elements – fire, air, water and earth – are each partial ways of participating in reality, each an aspect of aether. The element earth is the solid way of being, the element water is liquid, air is the gaseous and fire, the consuming way of being.48 The way the elements work in the natural world – like falling rain or rising springs – is there for all to see. Some of the elements’ chemical behaviours were evident to alchemists and cooks; their biological behaviours were evident to farmers and fishermen; and their physiological and psychological behaviours were evident to patients and doctors. The one matter in four forms was everywhere, which is why artists’ pigments were sold in apothecaries and why, as Lomazzo said, colours ‘cause diverse effects in the beholders’.49 Just two things are needed to understand how the elements relate to the Diptych: their distribution in an ideal world and their inherent qualities.
Heavy things want to fall to the centre of the earth and light things want to rise up to the heavens. The elements had varying density or subtlety, so, in an ideal world, dense earth would want to be a sphere at the centre of the universe. Above it would be a body of less dense water. Surrounding that, in turn, would be subtle air. Between air and the heavens would be a layer of the subtlest element, fire. Ideally, the terrestrial elements would be four Russian doll-like nested spheres.
However, the world is not ideal – bits of earth, for example, protrude above the sphere of water. (This is, of course, providential. If it were not the case, we would all drown. The world’s design is necessarily imperfect as it provides a base from which to strive for perfection.) Also, all things in the world are mixtures of elements – none of them occurs pure. Mixtures of elements decompose, recompose into other mixtures and try to move to the sphere of their predominant element. So, a body in which earth predominates will fall, exhibiting ‘gravity’, in the spheres of water, air and fire. Similarly, a body in which fire predominates will rise, exhibiting ‘levity’, in the spheres of earth, water and air. Bodies composed of mainly water or air rise or fall according to their position relative to their ideal homes.
When cohabiting within mixed bodies, some elements get on well with each other, while others do not and their relationships depend upon their qualities. Those qualities – as referred to by Chaucer’s Doctor and by painters like Alberti and Lomazzo – are hot, cold, wet and dry. Each element has two qualities and harmonious relations exist between elements that share a quality. Discordant relations exist between elements that have no qualities in common. Fire is dry and hot, air is hot and wet, water is wet and cold, while earth is cold and dry. Hence, it will be noticed that in their ideal – unmixed, Russian doll-like – homes, each adjacent nested sphere would have good relations with its neighbouring spheres. As an alchemist said,
the province of the air is … constituted a peacemaker between hostile things, namely water and fire, dividing these lest they destroy one another.50
When mixed together in a single body, elements with shared qualities were comfortable, while elements that do not share qualities were less comfortable. Discordant relations prompt change, with each component seeking new neighbours with whom they can be more comfortable. Alchemists and cooks, farmers and fishermen, doctors and patients all sought to harness these elemental desires to mould the one matter in four forms to their particular needs. Cennini, for example, put powdered lapis into a (fiery) ball of wax, gum and resin, then allowed the blue ultramarine to escape into the (watery) pot of lye.
The Diptych’s painter knew all these elemental properties. He or she might have purified their own lapis to make the ultramarine and they certainly mixed their materials to make a harmonious whole. The Diptych’s harmony is not just visual and aesthetic – it is also structural and elemental. For example, the fact that it is in such good physical condition today suggests that all its individual components – the gold, the numerous pigments, the egg and oak – are quite happy with their assigned places. They must like their mixed compositions, since they have not de- or recomposed. They have had over 600 years in which to change if they wanted to and very little of the Diptych has rotted, rusted, peeled or faded. Almost all of its elements have chosen to maintain the same relationships with their neighbours that the artist originally gave them.
A patron like Richard would certainly have known enough about the elements to appreciate this aspect of the artist’s work. But keeping details of four (or five) things in your head is difficult, and the Diptych’s structure suggests that it is about a dichotomy. Luckily, two of the terrestrial elements – fire and water – stood out from the others. The chemistry of their relationship is outlined elsewhere.51
Fire and water contrast in much more than just their hot and dry or cold and wet qualities. Fire usually rises, whereas water usually falls; fire is light, whereas water can be dark; fire is active, whereas water often seems passive. Fire relates to something’s ‘formal’ aspect, the informing principle or the workmanship embedded in an object. Water, on the other hand, relates to that thing’s ‘material’ aspect, the matrix which is informed and is receptive to workmanship. Both are equally necessary in all things, with heaven and earth, or fire and water, being the masculine and feminine principles respectively.52 Together, fire and water provide clues to the riddle of why Richard might have wanted to contemplate an apparently unlucky, unbalanced Diptych.
The Diptych’s painter could have made the left-hand, earthly panel predominantly watery ultramarine and the right-hand, heavenly panel predominantly fiery gold. But that would have been a bit too obvious. Ultramarine and gold both occur on both panels, reflecting the idea that everything is a combination of the celestial and the terrestrial, fire and water.53 As the painter knew, the Diptych could stand only with its heavenly and earthly panels joined. If unhinged, each would fall.54
The painter distinguished between their use of ultramarine and gold on the two panels by keeping them pure in heaven while mixing them on earth. The painter, though, did not really want to mix their ultramarine and gold. After all, they – or their apothecary – had spent a great deal of effort separating them in the lapis lazuli and, as the Pontifical showed, painters even made a significant effort to keep practically identical blues separate too. Plutarch said:
Mixing produces conflict, conflict produces change … This is why painters call a blending of colours a ‘deflowering’ and Homer calls dyeing ‘tainting’; and the common usage regards ‘the unmixed and pure as virgin and undefiled.’55
Purifying pigments involved separation, yet image-making required colours to be combined. And artists knew two very good reasons for ‘deflowering’, ‘defiling’ or ‘tainting’ their colours.
First, painters like Lomazzo knew that the qualities of colours influenced those who gazed upon them. Alberti professed indifference to those qualities, but our unknown painter took care that, when Richard gazed upon his Diptych, its influence would be balanced. Too much watery (cold-and-wet) ultramarine would induce a phlegmatic (calm and apathetic) tendency in the beholder, while too much fiery (hot-and-dry) gold would induce a choleric (angry and ambitious) response.56 In order to have a balanced physiological or psychological effect on the beholder’s soul, the artist needed to mix both ultramarine and gold.
27 Wilton Diptych, detail of St Edmund from the ‘earthly’ panel. |
Painters’ second reason for mixing colours was more spiritual. To get their rich ultramarine, painters had to take a stone that came from the doorstep to Paradise and separate the three minerals that God had put together. Technically, the purification of lapis was an act of what the Greeks called ‘strife’.57 In biblical terms, it was an act of ‘scattering’.58 It involved making ‘many from one’ (gold, white and blue powders from one rock). Scattering involved division, the potentially unlucky or sinful side of which has already been seen in the Diptych’s structure. Cennini knew that the division of lapis’ blue and gold had philosophical or spiritual implications, because, right at the very beginning of his description of how to ‘scatter’ lapis, he said that the pure ultramarine should then be recombined with gold.59 To atone – literally ‘at one’ – for their act of scattering, painters had to ‘gather’.60 In other words, having ‘dismembered’ the doorstep of Paradise, they ‘remembered’ its original composition in their paintings. By mixing their colours, painters engaged in a process of making ‘one from many’: one image from many pigments.
In fact, the pigments only appear to be mixed and on both panels the colours remain quite separate. Yet the way the painter presents ultramarine and gold is true to their natures as water and fire, feminine and masculine or earth and heaven. Consistent with the Diptych’s theme of rejoined division, the painter allowed ultramarine and gold to be mixed together more when the eye rested on the earthly panel, and most obviously so in the robe worn by St Edmund (illus. 27).
This paint passage evidently held particular significance at some time in the past – it is the only passage on the inner images that has been damaged by physical contact. (Edward’s robe was faded by light.) The damage could not have happened during transport so it must have occurred when on display, and it was probably caused by repeated touching or kissing, possibly even by Richard himself.
St Edmund and King Richard both wear luxurious brocade robes made from expensive lampas cloth of gold. Richard was very conscious of the power of his image and did much to control it through portraiture and clothes. He commissioned textile designs from his very own Italian weaver, Bendenell de Beek, who then made up the cloth. In the Diptych, Richard’s robe bears a very personal, complex and expensive asymmetric pattern that is rich in worldly meaning. The eagles and roundels refer to the Holy Roman Emperors, indicating his pretension to the Imperial Crown. There are also heraldic allusions to Isabelle, whose hand in marriage he sought.61
Edmund’s robe is also full of meaning, but it is less worldly. The fabric is also an expensive gold lampas, but the pattern is symmetrical, easier and cheaper to weave than Richard’s complex asymmetric one. If Richard’s pattern is an outward sign of his inner aspirations, then St Edmund’s robe is more like an outward sign of his inner nature. Its pattern is impersonal and comes from a long tradition.
The pattern in the real textile came from a complex interplay between warp and weft, which are, in turn, material reflections of fire and water or heaven and earth in the fabric of the universe. Of course, the Diptych’s robe is not really a textile made from a golden warp and blue weft – it is a passage made from a layer of ultramarine in egg on top of an extraordinarily thin layer of pure, beaten, gold metal. However, bearing in mind the meanings of ultramarine and gold, in creating the robe the painter followed the same pattern as God’s creation, because just as heaven takes precedence over earth (and just as the warp is strung on the loom before the weft can be woven), so also the heavenly gold was placed on the panel before the earthly ultramarine.
The Diptych’s robes are made by a technique called ‘sgraffito’. First, the appropriate area is covered in one colour and then it is entirely obscured by a layer of paint in another colour. Then, after the paint dries but before it becomes brittle, the artist gently rubs it to partially expose the underlying layer. The painter removed the outward matter (ultramarine) to reveal the innermost form (gold), just like Aristotle’s sculptor who uncovered the form of a statue that lay hidden within the raw quarry stone’s matter. Of course, the innermost form was always there, concealed by the outermost matter, but matter is feminine and the potential mother to many forms. Which particular one of matter’s countless potential forms actually arose was determined by the patron’s wish and the artist’s skill.
The sgraffito process is eminently practical because it follows a divine pattern. As in Genesis, first came the heavenly, then came the earthly, then the realms that had been distinguished were ornamented. In the finished pattern, the fiery, heavenly gold remains whole – if not wholly seen – while the watery, earthly blue is fragmented. The painter’s actions and their results are completely true to their materials’ natures.
The golden form that the artist revealed through the ultramarine – a symmetrical pair of birds – echoes the Diptych’s potentially unlucky form. Paired birds are found in the Celtic tradition, but the shape they take on Edmund’s robe comes from the East, as did the silk in cloth of gold and the ultramarine in paint.62 When paired, one bird is earthly while the other is heavenly, and they are related to the motif of one bird with two heads, where one head is earthly and the other heavenly.63 In the Diptych, Richard (a king but not a saint) wears a robe full of political significance and enjoys temporal power on earth while seeking spiritual authority from heaven. However, the two birds (king and saint) on Edmund’s robe represent both temporal power and spiritual authority. Richard wears only a crown, while Edmund has a crown and a halo. One of Edmund’s birds corresponds to his crown and the other to his halo. The ornament initially seems to echo the Diptych’s divided form, but a small detail – a coronet that encircles the two birds’ necks – alludes to its reunion. The pattern suggests that Edmund achieved a union of heaven and earth. How he achieved that union will be considered in the final chapter.
Yet, of course, what seems to be a patterned robe is actually just an unbroken layer of heavenly gold partially hidden by a broken layer of earthly ultramarine. The layers remain completely separate and the two birds only appear when blue light and gold light mix in the eye. Meanwhile, on the heavenly panel, there is no such cunning mixing of fire and water.
The heavenly panel could not be painted with celestial aether, so, from an elemental point of view, it had to reflect the ideal towards which the terrestrial elements strive. The whole world tells us what they strive for. Earthly matter wants to express its gravity and fall, fiery matter wishes to act on its levity and rise, while watery and airy matter, as dense and subtle fluids, flow to find their respective homes between fire and earth.
The painter knew that gold was fiery and, given the choice, would want to be at the top of the Diptych. He or she also knew that ultramarine was watery so it would want to be lower, between air and earth. Indeed, on the heavenly panel, that is exactly where the broad sweeps of colour are. The very top of the heavenly image is fiery gold and beneath it is a broad sweep of black-and-white feathered wings that relate to air; then come the Virgin and angels’ ultramarine robes of water above a flower-strewn earthly meadow.64 From an elemental point of view, the heavenly panel is the ideal arrangement towards which all elements on earth strive.
As always, the painter did what he or she wanted and what the patron would support. On the earthly panel, they wanted to mix pigments in a manner that reflected the terrestrial mixture of elements. But on the heavenly panel, the painter arranged their materials exactly as the materials themselves would have chosen if they were given the opportunity. The elements would have chosen this arrangement because it accommodated their subtlety and density while also giving each a sympathetic neighbour. At the top, fiery gold (dry and hot) had contact with airy (hot and wet) feathers, so that, at their meeting, they shared the quality of heat. Watery ultramarine (wet and cold) had (wet) airy feathers above it and (cold) earthly meadow beneath it. Thus, just as the sgrafitto of St Edmund’s robe was a cosmologically appropriate superposition of layers, the whole heavenly panel placed materials in cosmologically appropriate adjacent passages. The heavenly panel’s diverse elements all had harmonious relationships – exactly what Richard sought for his kingdom on earth.
Yet the panel is not four completely separate bands of colour. Each band accepts parts of the others, so, for example, the watery robes have earthly flowers rising, and airy wings dipping into them. This blurring of boundaries softens the image for the viewer and is a reminder that elements ‘offer hospitality to strangers’.
Most of this mixing of bands is between immediate neighbours in their ideal homes – a mixing of elements that share a quality. However, the Christ Child’s pure (fiery) cloth of gold is completely surrounded by the Virgin’s pure (watery) ultramarine robe. This is a mixing of elements that do not share any qualities and, in the artist’s studio, fire and water’s antipathy was the driving force behind Cennini’s purification of lapis. Of course, heaven is no place for antagonistic relationships, hence, in the Diptych, this particular mixture is a reminder that all things contain their opposite. Just as the painter knew that a dull black metal contained a bright white powder, so the painter surrounded the gold with ultramarine, echoing the fact that the feminine Virgin enveloped the masculine Christ Child.
The Diptych’s painter seemed to like the idea that all things contained their opposite. After all, he or she also put the heavenly Lamb of God on earth and Richard’s earthly badges in heaven. Yet when it came to their materials, they almost seem to have overdone it. We might have expected more of the earthly material on the earthly panel and more of the heavenly material on the heavenly panel. In fact, it is the other way around.
Given that the painter treated gold as the heavenly material, the expanse of ultramarine in heaven might be a riddle for us, but the reason would have been obvious to Richard. He was depicted on the earthly panel looking at the heavenly panel and, in reality, he probably spent more time gazing upon the Virgin and Child rather than looking at the image of himself and three saints. The earthly panel was mainly there to remind him of his place and responsibilities. The reason the heavenly panel had so much ultramarine is because the king’s eyes rested upon it. Ultramarine was fit for a king’s eyes. It cost more than ten times as much as the best azurite and the reasons for its high price were given in Marbode of Rennes’s poem.
The French bishop’s poem listed ultramarine’s powers – all of which were repeated in English encyclopedias.65 Some of ultramarine’s powers, like lowering fevers, were quite worldly and might be attributed to the cold and wet qualities of elemental water (illus. 28). Other powers were more obscure. For example, the statement that it ‘Guards the wearer from intended harm’ may hint at the use of lapis as a scrying stone that could offer foresight. This would relate the watery stone to hydromancy, a form of divination that involved gazing on the surface of water, as practised in the Old Testament by Joseph.66 Other powers were heavenly:
Even Heaven is moved by its force divine,
To list the vows presented at its shrine.
Its soothing power contentions fierce controls,
And in sweet concord binds discordant souls;
Above all others this Magicians love,
Which draws responses from the realms above.67
Richard wanted to rest his eyes on ultramarine in order to have his prayers answered.
Marbode’s suggestion sounds idolatrous. But the way ultramarine was used in the Pontifical and the Diptych suggests that the Bishop of Metz and Richard II both believed that it offered something that another practically identical blue could not offer. Marbode was not heretical. He knew that ultramarine could never actively intercede for us in prayer because it was a mineral occupying the lowest level of existence in the great chain of being. Ultramarine is not on a higher rung of the ladder to heaven, between us and God. It is on a lower rung, between us and non-existence.
Marbode did not think that lapis influenced God – what he listed in his poem were the consequences of its influence on the soul of one whose eyes rest upon it. Indeed, his claims are completely consistent with accounts of how prayer operates in the spiritual economy. Plotinus, for example, provided a technical explanation of how prayer works and his explanation can be directly related to ultramarine’s powers. He said the efficacy of prayers can be explained
by the fact in Nature that there is an agreement of like forces … some influence falls [from God] upon the petitioner … The prayer is answered by the mere fact that [one] part and [another] part are wrought to one tone like a musical string which, plucked at one end, vibrates at the other also.
Plotinus said that prayers were answered automatically because of sympathy or kinship between God and the one who prays. He went on to say that
Often too, the sounding of one string awakens what might pass for a perception in another, the result of their being in harmony and tuned to one musical scale.68
This is exactly the way that colours cause ‘diverse effects’ in those who behold them, as the painter Lomazzo claimed.69 Stones, pigments or colours may be one type of instrument and the human soul another type of instrument, but when one instrument vibrates, another can resonate in sympathy.70 Albertus Magnus suggested how lapis can be like a soul in prayer. Citing Hermes, he said ‘spirits cannot enter bodies unless they are purified … they enter only through the instrumentality of water.’71
28 Afghan lapis lazuli: a mineral embodiment of elemental water.
The key to getting prayers answered is the ‘instrumentality of water’ and, with ultramarine on the heavenly panel of his Diptych, Richard’s eyes were bathed in ‘water’ so he could be influenced by the element. This practice of communing with the elements may be largely forgotten today, but records of it stretch from the ancient Egyptians to the late sixteenth century, when a Dominican advised the spiritual aspirant to ‘examine carefully the plants, the stones and all the elements and be ashamed before their obedience’.72
The elements’ obedience and reliability was known to Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and to artists who purified lapis. Golden pyrites always stayed in the ball of fire, watery ultramarine always fell quickly into the watery lye and the slow, earthly white always lowered the quality of later batches of ultramarine. These obedient and reliable elemental behaviours were part of the painter’s craft secret or mystery. And, outside painters’ studios, the elements are there for all to see. Thus, clues to the source of ultramarine’s heavenly power can still be found in the everyday behaviour of water.
Water comes from above, falling as rain, and it comes from below, rising in wells and springs. It is given by heaven and by earth. Once given, it comes and goes of its own accord, whether we like it or not, instantly doing the bidding of the other elements. So waves are whipped up by the wind (air) and melt away as the wind drops, and water effortlessly parts and seamlessly rejoins to flow around rocks (earth). Water’s willingness to respond means that its character changes with little warning. In rivers, it can change from treacherous rapids to a tranquil pool in a matter of seconds. In oceans, it can change from a calm, sheltered bay to a raging, open sea in a matter of yards. Water also responds to its contrasting element (fire). Water quenches fire if it is dominant, it is vaporized if fire is dominant and it absorbs fire if the two elements are balanced. Yet if water absorbs fire, then it generously gives it back to the intermediate elements, earth and air, as, for example, when hot tea cools by warming the cup and air around it.
As such, water is completely obedient. Water obeys with grace because whenever it is transformed, its transformations are unfailingly beautiful. Unifying blankets of snow are countless filigree crystals, glistening dew drops are innumerable perfect spheres, and intangible mists magically arise, softly envelop and silently vanish. When liquid water scatters or gathers, its movements are always fluent, if not hypnotic. It follows smooth, elegant, economical curves to assume whatever shape circumstances ask of it. In contemplating water’s everyday behaviour, one can easily be ‘ashamed before its obedience’.
Water’s graceful obedience is the result of being completely in tune with the realities around it. It has no selfish agenda. It does not calculate or negotiate but instantly, selflessly and unconditionally does whatever is required of it. This characteristic helps account for the element’s use in ritual ablution and baptism, in which water cleanses and washes away the old self. (Indeed, water’s sacred function is echoed in the secular world, where it revives in recreational swimming on holiday, for example.) Yet ritual ablutions and baptisms would have no effect – they would be like ‘water off a duck’s back’ – if there was not also something potentially watery in people.
Traditionally, a person is composed of a body, a soul and a spirit, where the spirit is relatively fiery, while the soul is relatively watery.73 So, for example, I could speak of my emotions ‘welling up’, I could ‘bottle them up’ or ‘pour them out’ and they might even uncontrollably ‘gush out’ or ‘boil over’. If extreme, I might suffer ‘waves’ of anxiety and could be ‘plunged into the depths’ of depression before being ‘purged’ with ‘floods’ of tears. This water imagery was current around the time the Diptych was painted and Julian of Norwich described the unfeeling heart as ‘dry’, promising that God’s mercy ‘slaketh’ all troubles.74 Meister Eckhart even described union with God as ‘drowning’.75
Thus, the watery soul has potential sympathy with watery ultramarine. It must also be remembered that in the natural world, on the doorstep of Paradise, ultramarine was one of three components in lapis, a rock manifesting what Albertus Magnus called the ‘natural trinity’. The earthy white calcite matrix was the rock’s body, the fiery golden pyrites were its spirit and, appropriately enough, watery blue ultramarine could be considered to be the soul of lapis. Marbode’s poem suggested that a person who gazed upon lapis would be reminded of water and how it behaved in the world. If their soul followed the ultramarine’s watery behaviour – resonating in sympathy with it – then fevers were lowered, foresight was gained and prayers were answered.
Richard cannot have failed to know the connections between ultramarine, his soul and his prayer. He must also sometimes have contemplated his Diptych by candlelight, seeing the punched gold sparkle with every flicker as the fiery material showed its sympathy with a fiery light source. Under candlelight, next to the lively gold, ultramarine’s flat matt surface would look still, like the surface of a tranquil pond. And here lies the key to the ‘instrumentality of water’ and ultramarine’s ability to ‘draw responses from the realms above’.
Water goes where it will, and its will is to fulfil its destiny. Drops, trickles, streams, rivers and oceans of water seamlessly join and demonstrate the unity that underlies diversity. (These watery transformations are a recurring theme in Dante’s Divine Comedy.) Water does not shirk nooks and crannies, but fits perfectly into any shape. Water resists nothing externally, and it resists nothing internally. It allows the free passage of light, so that, if poured into a coloured glass, it adopts the colour of the glass as well as its shape. If water carries something within itself to make it muddy, then it clarifies itself when left alone, just as the ‘wheat and chaff’ of suspended raw azurite settle to sort rich from pale colours, leaving crystal-clear liquid.
Water naturally conforms to whatever surrounds it and accommodates whatever is within it. Water is also always ready to change – to pick up, drop off, fill up and move out. When it moves, its surface changes. When water is disturbed, waves form and any image that is reflected in that surface, or refracted into the depths, is broken. Yet when left alone, the surface becomes mirror-like and returns, or transmits, an unbroken image. Water receives light but it does not retain it, so it accepts and relinquishes images of whatever is above it, just as it selflessly accepts and relinquishes shapes of whatever is below it and whatever is within it.
Water is naturally smooth and all of its movements ultimately aim for smoothness. According to Isisdore of Seville, water takes its name, ‘aqua’, from its constant desire to find an ‘equal’ level.76 Aqua is elemental equanimity, so any turbulence in the watery soul is the effect of it trying to regain its natural equanimity.
If Richard bore the nature of water in mind as his eyes rested upon the Diptych’s still, ultramarine blue, then his soul could respond sympathetically to the element. He was depicted on the earthly panel looking at a vision of heaven, and the image he received would depend upon the nature of his soul. If his soul was agitated by whatever was beneath him, or obstructed by whatever was within him, then he would see only a fragmented and dim image of the heavens above him. Grief, for example, stirs up the soul’s surface, breaking up appearances so that – as Shakespeare made one of Richard’s retinue say – ‘Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows’ (or twenty reflections).77 If, on the other hand, Richard was at rest, then his mirror-flat soul would offer him a faithful image of the heavens above.
As a king trying to do God’s work on earth, Richard wanted a heavenly model to follow. If he was upset by the political machinations of those around him, then the heavenly image would be broken by the rippling surface of his soul. If he allowed his personal wishes to muddy the waters, then the heavenly image would be obscured. He knew that the world around him and the world within him could distort and cloud his judgement. He knew too that his earthly actions would be guided safely only by a clear, unruffled, view of the heavenly image.
Albertus Magnus said that spirits enter bodies through the instrumentality of water. Prayers are answered when the spirit can enter the body, and the ‘instrumentality of water’ relates to the state of the soul, which can be smooth and clear, or rough and cloudy. If the soul is seen as water that potentially offers a view of heaven, then choppy and turbid water fragments and limits the spirit’s penetration. Only by keeping the water still and clear can the spirit enter fully and deeply. Light always falls on bodies of water and it always carries images with it. Whether those images fill the body of water depends on the state of the water, not the light. Of course, if heavenly images are unable to form deep within the soul, then that soul remains ill-informed and only partially aware of what is or is not possible in the spiritual economy. The soul’s wishes may therefore be unrealistic and risk being frustrated.
Prayers are answerable when they are well informed and realistic; when personal wishes are in accord or in tune with impersonal realities. Realistic prayers are automatically answered – as Plotinus said – just as water automatically falls when it goes over a cliff, rests when in a pool and rises to the heavens when warmed by the sun. Ultramarine does not ‘draw responses from the realms above’ because of some special connection with God. By demonstrating the ‘obedience of the elements’, the ‘instrumentality of water’ reminds the person at pray of the way the uncorrupted world works.
In following its destiny, water might seem to yield obediently, but that apparent passivity hides enormous power. (Shakespeare even made Richard’s victorious cousin declare himself to be ‘yielding water’.78) By yielding and accepting, water is transformed – it goes around rocks, gets whipped up by winds and is warmed by the sun. But, ultimately, water itself transforms – it extinguishes raging fire, feeds parched air and its most obvious transformations are expressed in its relationship with earth as invincible floods that wash away whatever lies before them. Fortunately, floods are exceptional, so water usually seems to be deflected by whatever stands in its way. Nonetheless, imperceptibly, water takes earth piece by piece to the bottom of the sea, and Merlin prophesied that even the sluggish Thames would eventually ‘overturn mountains’.79 Accepting the call home, water fulfils its vocation and patiently carves canyons deep through solid rock. As Marbode’s poem claimed about lapis,
The captive’s chains its mighty virtue breaks;
The gates fly open, fetters fall away,
And sends their prisoner to the light of day.80
Lapis does not offer quick fixes – shattering chains, forcing gates and picking locks would be best undertaken with martial iron – instead, tranquil, powdered lapis offers solutions that steadily, irresistibly and invincibly disarm.81 The ultramarine on Richard’s Diptych was a reminder of yielding water’s obedience and it would have reminded him of the power that comes from acceptance and patience. If Richard had been able to form his petitions in accordance with spiritual realities, it would have been inevitable that his prayers should be answered.
If we – along with Shakespeare and most scholars – dismiss the Holinshed’s Chronicles’ reported possibility that Richard made his way to Scotland, then we should probably accept that, at the age of 33, he did not escape Pontefract Castle bodily. The chains that held him captive did not break, the gates did not fly open and the fetters did not fall away physically. However, no one can know whether or not, alone in his cell, his soul found its freedom.
