The Cosmatesque pavements and royal tombs of Westminster Abbey
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Tuesday 17 May 2022
(6pm) - The Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 3AT
- Lecturer: Warwick Rodwell
Westminster Abbey contains the only surviving assemblage of thirteenth-century cosmatesque mosaics in north-west Europe. They comprise a geometrical pavement in the sanctuary and one of ‘carpet’ design in the shrine chapel of St Edward. The shrine pedestal itself was also once covered with mosaic, as is the tomb of Henry III and that of his grandson John of Windsor. In each case, the matrix is Purbeck marble, chased and inlaid with tesserae and opus sectile of porphyry, other marbles and gilded glass. Henry III was responsible for the creation of the pavements and monuments, between the mid-1250s and his death in 1272. He drew inspiration from Canterbury, where he had seen a Romanesque marble mosaic pavement which had been moved and reconstructed by the Cosmati in the 1230s.
Lecturer
Professor Warwick Rodwell OBE is an archaeologist, architectural historian and academic. He was lately Visiting Professor in the Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, and is Consultant Archaeologist to Westminster Abbey, where he is also a member of the College of St Peter in Westminster. He is the author of many books and articles, including the standard textbook on church archaeology. He excavated a number of prehistoric, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and medieval sites in Essex and Eastern England during the 1960s and 1970s which became particularly significant, has had listed long-term consultancies at a number of major abbeys and cathedrals and was one of the pioneers who created the discipline of ‘church archaeology’ as we know it today.
Completed