Have you seen...the Masterpiece that thought it was a Table?

For three hundred years they sat round it and ate, used it as a workbench [1], maybe even played a game of cards.  After all, it was a table and that is what it was for.  Little did they know that on the underside of the humble wooden board beneath their trenchers, tools and Queens of Hearts lay a sacred masterpiece in gold and red and blue. It was not until 1847 [2] that someone looked underneath and realised what it was: an altarpiece of outstanding beauty and workmanship.

The Despenser Retable, unknown maker, c.1350-1400, oil on panel, Norwich Cathedral

It is long, at over two and a half metres and separated into five recessed panels, each displaying a different element of Christ’s death and resurrection.  The first panel shows the scourging and humiliation of Christ by three figures dressed in medieval costume with painted footwear and tights, although these seem to be rolled down on the brutish figure in blue.  His almost laughing expression recalls Hieronymous Bosch’s later depiction of the same event.  The scene is cramped and full of action.  There is even an attempt at perspectival realism with a sense of recession into the room achieved by the angles of the floor and architecture.

The second scene, partly damaged, shows Christ carrying his cross followed by men on horseback, again dressed in medieval contemporary dress.  The bright red tights of two figures and helmet and tunic of another, frame this image.  The central panel depicts Christ on the cross, head bowed and looking down at Mary, half swooning and supported possibly by John into whose care she had just been given by her Son.  The upper part of this panel has been restored, as the entire top section was damaged, possibly when being used as a table [3].

In the fourth scene Christ rises from the dead, stepping out of a coffin onto a pair of slumbering guards dressed in red and blue.  Christ’s wounds can easily be seen as spots of red and He makes the sign of blessing.  In fact, a vivid red has been used in every panel taking the eye through each scene and creating almost a theme of sacrifice and bloodshed.  There are also traces of bright red paint in the wooden frame surrounding each picture.

In the final scene, Christ ascends to heaven, watched by thirteen onlookers composed of the twelve disciples and Mary. The decorative composition of upturned faces creating a pattern across the panel is reminiscent of the adoring saints in the San Pier Maggiore altarpiece by Jacopo di Cione.  This was painted in 1370-1, probably ten years before our altarpiece was commissioned by Henry Despenser (c.1343-1406).

Jacopo di Cione, (detail) The San Pier Maggiore Altarpiece, 1370-1, The National Gallery, London

The reasons behind the commission are disturbing for some twenty-first century viewers [4].  Henry Despenser was Bishop of Norwich at the time of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, and he was instrumental in its violent suppression.  The altarpiece was probably commissioned by him in thanksgiving for the end of hostilities and the victory of the authorities [5].  Ironically this vivid and beautiful panel was painted in response to the putting down of protests against images in the Church.  Turning the altarpiece upside down and into a table, saved it from the ravages of iconoclasm that raged during both Henry VIII's 1536-9 Dissolution of the Monasteries and his son's Protestant purge of images in 1549.

Once the table’s true identity was discovered, the altarpiece was returned to its rightful place behind an altar in the Chapel of St Luke in Norwich Cathedral.  I saw it two weeks ago as part of the wonderful Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia Exhibition at the University of Norwich, but by now it will have returned home once again. Pay it a visit, it is well worth it!

Alison Barker

Coming next: Have you seen...the Set of Deadly Playing Cards?

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[1] Plummer argues that the altarpiece was in an annexe of the Cathedral in the ‘plumbery’, due to the traces of white lead and green copper residue found on the back of it when in use as a workbench. Plummer P, ‘Restoration of a Retable in Norwich Cathedral’, Studies in Conservation, Vol.4, No.3 (Aug 1959), pp.106-115

[2] Collins I (ed), Masterpieces: Art  and East Anglia, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia,  Norwich, 2013, p.86

[3] Stanbury S, The Visual Object of Desire in late Medieval England, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, p.77

[4] Collins I (ed), 2013, p.86

[5] ibid