INTRODUCTION

I. THE SCULPTURES IN THEIR CONTEXT

The basic shape of this Cathedral is easy to hold in the mind. A glance at the plan will reveal the gothic building’s essential symmetry. The Transepts stand half-way along the main structure: seven main bays to the east of them form the Chancel (beyond which the little Lady Chapel extends), and seven to the west form the Nave.

A brief history of the fabric's construction is essential to understanding the sometimes unexpected date-groupings of the roof bosses on the vault and in our catalogue.2 Work was begun at the East End (Lady Chapel) in the late thirteenth century, on a site east of the Romanesque Cathedral. The latter was modified to form part of the Gothic Cathedral as construction proceeded westwards. This building of the Presbytery—the eastern part of the Chancel—was in hand at the same time as the conversion of the Romanesque North and South Towers into Transepts. Construction then continued in the Choir, through the Crossing between the Towers, and on down the Nave to the West Front. The building history spans about a hundred years (during which the Black Death struck the town, visibly reducing the quality of the materials and craftsmanship, for example in the vault carvings of the six westernmost bays of the Nave). This spread of construction over a century makes Exeter perhaps the most perfect example of a Decorated Cathedral,3 its eastern part in the early form of the style, its western half in the later.

The main interior of the Cathedral is divided into the three storeys typical of the period. A large arcade at ground level admits light from the aisle windows, a triforium runs above this; clerestory windows above illuminate the vault. Unusually, the walkway is at clerestory rather than triforium level. At Exeter, each of these elements is unusually rich in detail. Multiple columns cluster in each pier, bearing equally elaborate moulded arches; the Triforium creates shallow apertures fronted by delicate columns and many small moulded capitals and carved label-stops (mostly heads); the contrasting brilliance of the clerestory leads the eye up to the palm-like effect of the tierceron vault. 4 Together all these form a unified whole visually “finished” by the bold roof bosses.

The bosses, capitals and corbels of any cathedral channel its forces, directing to earth the thrust of its roof and walls. At Exeter all these weight-bearing stones are elaborately carved: engineering and art are fused. Indeed, these important carvings cannot be studied in isolation from their structural context, which has its own, sometimes surprising, logic. For example, the apparently straightforward east-to-west construction of this cathedral may present us with an enigmatically smiling late thirteenth-century face (boss 180A) to the west of a fourteenth-century group, or carving patently by the same hand in both the Presbytery (boss 77) and the Towers. However, the seemingly random first leaps of a spider make no sense until by her landings she spins her spokes and weaves her wheel: the reason for the designers' “leaps” will become apparent.

The logic of the Cathedral's construction can be extracted from the welter of mundane detail in the financial accounts for the fabric of the building, surviving on rolls of vellum: the Fabric Rolls.5 These make Exeter an exceptionally well-documented cathedral. It is rare, also, in retaining extensive areas of its medieval colour, which therefore has an important place in this study. We have in addition an unusual amount of information about lost splendours, destroyed during the Reformation, whereby the bosses may be understood in their intended visual context.

Notable among these losses is Bishop Stapledon's Reredos, which framed the High Altar. The Fabric Rolls reveal the immense importance and elaboration of this tall stone screen completed in about 1328, the pinnacles of whose canopies rose to the great east window of the Chancel. The lost screen was as wide as the Choir and as tall as the arcade. Stapledon's Tomb and Sedilia, which once formed the two ends of the reredos, survive on the north and south sides of the Presbytery.6 The marks left by the pinnacles can be seen found high in the moulding of the arcade above. Under the canopies was a congregation of fifty-four large figures including the Virgin and Sts Peter and Paul, fully coloured, and varied in material—there was a lily of metal foil and by 1506 crowns of silver-gilt on the Virgin and Child.7 (The effect would have been something like that once made by the bright figures on the West Front, where the kings held metal sceptres.) Its subject-matter in unknown, but the figures' position by the altar would have related them to the Mass. Also rising from floor level in different parts of the Cathedral there still survive the great stone Pulpitum  and parclos screens (in both stone and wood) with substantial remains of polychrome.

The Bishop's Throne in the Chancel was not intended to be seen in its present naked state.8 Keying of the oak suggests that it was not only painted and gilt, but may also have been elaborately textured with moulded putty (as can still be seen in fragments on the stone effigy of Sir Henry de Raleigh in the adjacent South Aisle). The cathedra or throne is what distinguishes a cathedral from any other church. Here the bishop enthroned is the focus of the earthly authority whose divine source was daily presented on the altar.

All these give some idea of the surprising amount of colour which once adorned the cathedral. The bosses cannot accurately be assessed in their present polychrome isolation. Indeed, just as the altar and bishop's throne formed two colourful foci in the Chancel, so the figure of Christ hung high on the great Rood at the east end of the Nave was the focus for that area of the Cathedral. The attention of all who entered the Nave would have been raised to the Saviour as the source of the Church and her sacraments.9 It was for all this that the bosses formed a kind of canopy of honour.

They need also to be related to the construction of the building which they support. The medieval Fabric Rolls record the day-to-day business of building, but the crucial entries for the building's history are buried in details of the struggle to keep carts, harness and roads in good repair, and horses fed and stabled, during transportation of massive quantities of stone, timber and lead from distant sources. Accurate use of the Rolls to discover the date of a specific part of the building requires the historian to re-live engineering problems solved by the Romanesque and Gothic masons, and to explore the existing fabric in minute detail for clues which link up with the documents. Although the walls and vaulting now seem to be dappled at random with uncounted varieties of stone, the choice of each quarry was frequently dictated by the demands of some vital part of the structure.

Each quarry produces a stone with a markedly individual character.10 Porous fine-grained limestone was brought over the Channel from Caen in Normandy, and later from Beer in East Devon; a few great blocks came from Portland in Hampshire. Where these limestones were employed for bosses their carving is at its most detailed. Also used was shelly, calcareous sandstone from Salcombe Regis on the East Devon coast, and the comparable but more yellow Ham Hill stone from Somerset. These sandstones are dense and so have greater resistance to compression: for this reason they are found in the great arches supporting Towers and Transepts. Densest of all is the grey fossil “marble” from Purbeck, on the Dorset coast. Purbeck also takes a lovely polish (now lost),11 thus serving a dual purpose, as in the mighty columns of the main arcades.

Where a light-weight infilling was needed for the vault, porous stone from the upper beds of the Salcombe quarry, or volcanic “Thorverton Blue” stone (quarried from a nearby village), could be used. Remains of plaster on this infilling, and of white limewash on mouldings and ashlar walls, show that the varied effect of the different stones (other than the Purbeck) would have been hidden. White oil paint covered the oak vaulting in the Towers which was constructed to look like stone. The evidence now exposed shows the effect of engineering and aesthetics on the choice of materials for each task. All this reveals how carefully tone and colour were controlled by the builders: colour was introduced where it was part of a scheme, concealed where it was not.

Economy was also a consideration. The Fabric Rolls record the high prices charged by the marblers of Corfe, which made Purbeck marble a luxury. Its deep tone and worked surface provided the visual equivalent in the vertical plane to the richness of the vault. The small Triforium columns, though non-structural, were made of Purbeck to match the great main arcade below. Grey and black paint on the limestone niches of the Minstrels' Gallery (at triforium level) indicates that these were faked to imitate the genuine polished Purbeck, and reduce costs. Against the side-aisle walls, and corresponding to the main arcade columns, are half-columns which bear traces of the same treatment. In one place only was Purbeck marble painted over: the capitals which support the vaulting at the four corners of the Crossing, where a dense weight-bearing stone is essential, were gilded to match all the others.

The evidence of the Fabric Rolls, used in close conjunction with that of masonry and paint fragments, gives a picture of a very different Cathedral from that which Gilbert Scott left us after his 1870 restoration. We do not know with what colour the broad areas of limewash between the tall lines of Purbeck may have been broken up,12 but the Chancel ribs and bosses shone with azurite and gold, while the bosses in the rest of the Cathedral were predominantly gold, green and red. 

Having considered the original visual context of the bosses, and their materials, we return to their place in revealing the logic of the building's construction. Obviously, the side walls together with flying buttresses which rested on the side aisles had to be complete before the high vault could be constructed. This meant that the half-bosses above the clerestory windows in the side-walls, and those in the great arches between Towers and Crossing had to be set in place in advance of the great bosses in the vault. (It is not always appreciated how important it is to distinguish between the stage at which half-bosses are incorporated into walls, and that at which the associated vault is constructed.)13 In addition, it was not possible to remove the centreing at an arbitrary point in the work: all pauses in the construction took place after a full bay had been completed and its westernmost boss set in place in line with the great columns of the arcade. The great width and thrust of the central Crossing required that one bay on each side of it should be completed at the same time, before the centreing could be dismantled.14 Both the style of the carving and the changes in stone correspond consistently with these requirements: where a specific number of bosses or corbels is given in the Fabric Rolls it invariably makes perfect sense only in the light of the process of construction.

The process may be deduced from the Fabric Rolls. The Cathedral accounts begin in 1279, and up to 1299 are very far from complete.15 Evidence for the Romanesque Cathedral is contained chiefly in revealing details amongst the masonry of foundations and roof spaces, and in certain dimensions which the new Cathedral inherited from its predecessor.16 Its two great towers were converted into Transepts; for this purpose in 1286 and 1287 sixty-foot arches were cut into the internal walls of the north and south Towers.17 Had the Towers fallen at this stage they would have destroyed only what was already scheduled for rebuilding. We begin to understand the first leaps of that skilful spider. At the same time the Presbytery was under construction: here are found the Ham Hill bosses, purchased ready-carved,18 which are the earliest for which we have accounts. The Lady Chapel was also nearing completion by this date, and could soon have been brought into use to provide continuity of Collegiate worship.19

The Fabric Rolls make it absolutely clear that the bosses were carved before being put into position. In many cases there is irrefutable internal evidence that the painting, though not the gilding, was also far advanced at ground level.20 It has already been explained that half-bosses against the walls were set in place before the great bosses. Where payment for gilding is found in the Fabric Roll entry, half-bosses are included in the number; where gilding is specifically excluded (in xvij magnis clavis de petr' primand' apprestand' vsque ad aurum) the number of bosses “primed” agrees only with the number of great bosses located in that section of the vault.21

At midsummer 1301-1302 “forty-nine bosses and eight corbels” of the Presbytery were coloured with “gold silver azure and other colours”22 which can still be located by microscopic examination underneath the 1870 repainting. The mention of gold and azurite is significant, as they are too fragile and expensive to hazard on the pulley. The number of carvings referred to makes it clear that this painting was done in situ, for the “forty-nine” must include the nine half-bosses and the great bosses 46-85 which line up with the pairs of corbels A-D.

On the other hand, in the Crossing and the four bays adjacent to it, the forty-two bosses (116-121, 172-193, 262-275) which were primed but not gilded in 1316-1317 were painted at ground level: the red-lead priming continues deep into the masonry joints (which were of course inaccessible once the bosses were in position). Here the number quoted does not include any half-bosses (175A, 180A, 262A, 265A, 266A, 268A, 269A, 272A, 273A, 275A): these must therefore have been already in situ. Trickles of lead used in securing the joints of the horizontal ridge-ribs lie over this red priming, as do the remains of red sand used to plug the cracks during the plumbing operation;23 it is also covered by the final lime mortar pointing. The infilling of the vault was originally plastered and other moulded stone limewashed, before the bosses were gilded (there is no fragile azurite in this part of the cathedral—the blue here is indigo). The gold now stops short at the line to which the plaster came, but the costly vermilion used for final tidying up still lies over the mortar-joins and over some of the fragments of limewash. Since the surviving Rolls give no precise date for the gilders' work in the Crossing, we cannot be certain how long it took to construct the vault: all that is certain is that the bosses were not in place in 1316 (pace Pevsner).24 The High Altar was eventually dedicated in 1328: the preparations are discussed in Erskine.25

It is reasonably clear from the Fabric Rolls alone that the Presbytery vault had been built by 1301-2, but it is only by combining a study of the Fabric Rolls with the evidence revealed during conservation of the medieval polychrome that it becomes clear that the 1316 Fabric Rolls entry means precisely the opposite: i.e. that the vault had not been built. The entries for the priming of the Presbytery bosses and the gilding of the Crossing bosses must have been unspecified or among the Rolls now lost.

However, the entry for priming the Choir bosses in midsummer 1309 occurs so soon before the Christmas term records for glazing the clerestory and moving the choir-stalls that although the reference is clearly to a red lead background with no gilding at that stage, it seems likely that the artists' procedure varied.26 The medieval colour and gilding on bosses in the retrochoir at Wells (where Thomas of Witney was also involved) was apparently done in situ: it was very obviously applied in a sketchy manner to front surfaces only, with none of the meticulous care shown in the Exeter Crossing where every undercut leaf is primed an painted on all sides. Unfortunately, the evidence on Exeter's Choir bosses is obliterated by Scott's thick and insoluble repainting.

After the untimely murder of Bishop Stapledon by a London mob in autumn 1326, which ended his lavish patronage of the new cathedral, references to the bosses are tantalisingly few (we know that those in the South Nave Aisle were painted as late as 1436-1437 but clues to the dating of the six western bays of the Nave and its high vault are sparse).27 On boss 199 in the second bay we find the arms of Bishop Grandisson, who inherited the task of completing the work and had all but achieved this before his death in 1369. There is a very definite stylistic break between bosses 193 and 194 (i.e. between the first and second bays from the east) which is also marked by a startling change in the painters' techniques. The solid red lead and very costly vermilion of the background give place to cheap red earth (of which there is a plentiful local supply). The red lead is confined to the edges of the leaves and to prominent places, which may create the illusion that it extends over the background too. Instead of gold leaf over all the foliage, even up to the plaster line, the sides of every boss received an economical treatment with white metal leaf, now tarnished but probably once silver with a yellow glaze. Shortage of money is also suggested by the unfinished carving of bosses 200 and 201  in the second bay.28 The lovingly detailed painting continues throughout the church (and there is extensive evidence that it was also found on the figures of the West Front )29 but the paints available were less durable than those provided by the wealthy Stapledon. None of Grandisson's bosses survives in a condition as perfect as do many of those in the Transepts, Crossing and easternmost bay of the Nave. The new colour of the 1970s has obscured the original character of those in the five western bays.

Grandisson died in 1369 and was buried in the little Chapel which he had had constructed for himself within the West Front. The Christ here (boss 369),  though it has clearly been partly recut, is close in style to the king on 195. Only now is the construction of the remarkable West Front (which is essentially a facade built on outside an earlier fourteenth-century front) beginning to be partly understood, but it is clear that the part now visible originally consisted only of the two lower registers, A and B, with figures of kings and knights.30 Two figures now in the upper register (the eroded C10, and C28),31 and others under the South Porch have drapery which resembles that on Grandisson's figure bosses.

After Grandisson's death, polychromed monuments and extra altars continued to be added, but the cathedral remained essentially the same until the Reformation. At this point, presumably following the Order in Council of 21 February 1547/48, all accessible images were torn down, together with most of the great focal points of the medieval Cathedral: the Rood, the Reredos and the Altars. We are fortunate indeed that the bosses, particularly the figurative bosses, were out of reach of the treatment received by corbel K,  where chisel-marks can still be seen on the face of the Virgin. 

During the Commonwealth, the Cathedral was divided in half by a wall so that it could be used by two rival congregations.32 The wall's exact position is unclear, but boss 183, between Nave and Crossing, is the only one in the high vault to have suffered severe breakage, perhaps in connection with the building of this wall. At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 the Cathedral received repairs and furnishings which determined its general appearance for two centuries.33 The Minstrels' Gallery may have been repainted at this time.34 At some time the Cathedral interior received a pervasive coat of yellow-wash, the removal of which under Gilbert Scott was joyfully recorded by Freeman.35

The next major alteration to the Cathedral was in the 1870s at the hands of Gilbert Scott, who endeavoured to recover some of the medieval appearance, and resisted a demand that the Pulpitum be removed (in order to satisfy “an incontinent lech for vistas”).36 This same immoderate desire is still expressed in the popular feeling that the organ of 1665 “interrupts the view” from west to east: a response taking no account of the fact that the organ probably occupies the site of the great Rood. Scott also repainted the bosses in Chancel and Towers. He apparently made attempts to clean some medieval bosses, but desisted when colour was lost.37

As a result of the conviction and scholarship with which Scott and his contemporaries laboured to return dignity to the surroundings of worship, we are able to appreciate the validity of his contribution. It is all too easy to forget that the appearance of the interior today depends more on his work than on that of any other single restorer.38 The Victorian colour on the bosses is mediocre but it is an integral part of the Cathedral's mainly nineteenth-century interior surfaces. Scott restored a concept: he was not interested in our idea of accuracy.

The first professional attention which the surviving medieval paint received was under E. W. Tristram in the 1930s. His recolouring can be seen on Chancel corbels, but his consolidation of medieval colour elsewhere has had to be renewed. ACH was first consulted in 1976, when further recolouring had already been begun. A policy of conservation was then adopted, based on three considerations: the intentions of the original artists, the subsequent history of the building, and its present use and treatment. All surviving medieval colour has been preserved, and retouching of areas of loss carried out in order to recover the original tonal balance both within the bosses themselves and between bosses and the vault as a whole. Gilbert Scott's colour was simply cleaned, and the stone and wood which he stripped down has been left exposed. No attempt has been made to turn back the clock.39

 

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IIa. THE BOSSES AS OBJECTS

We began this introduction by a reminder of the function of bosses as keystones, considering the vault as a feat of engineering and as a canopy. It is one of the delightful qualities of roof-vaults of this period that each of these structurally vital stones is a sculpture in its own right. Some vaults present an overall theme: for example the vault ribs at Norwich and Tewkesbury show narrative sequences—the salvation story or the life of Christ may be read from one end of the vault to the other.40 Exeter has no such overall scheme. In some places however, the choice of a subject may have been deliberate. In the easternmost bay of the Cathedral, over the Lady Chapel altar, is the head of Christ (boss 2) surrounded by four bosses, each bearing a symbol of an Evangelist (1, 4, 5, 7). Over the High Altar in the Presbytery is the Coronation of the Virgin (47)  no doubt intended to be surrounded by the same symbols, three of which are on bosses 49, 50, 51, though the fourth, St Matthew's angel, has unaccountably strayed some distance (65).

A case might be made for the subjects of the main bosses in the easternmost bay of the Nave having been carefully chosen. Samson Kills the Lion (185)  is the ancient prefiguration of the Harrowing of Hell, and near Samson two bosses show pairs of beasts locked in conflict (189). Samson, like the nearby Crossing corbels (J, J') shows the apparently weak overcoming the apparently invincible. The two nearby Crossing corbels perhaps continue the theme, showing The Resurrection of Christ (J) and The Battle of Raphidim (J'), where Moses' arms are held in the air by Hur and Aaron until the Israelites' victory.41 More importantly, the Samson boss may be a prefiguration of the central boss (174) of the whole Cathedral, in the adjacent Crossing. The Chapels of Sts Paul and John the Baptist have bosses of their patron saints (143, 166).

Near the west end of the Cathedral (within the wall of which Grandisson is buried) there is also a detectable group. The Bishop (234) is shown in perpetual prayer next to the Murder of Thomas Becket (235). Cave also identifies Canon William de Weston, Grandisson's close associate (242), on the other side of the Becket, asking the saint to pray for him.42 An adjacent boss (238) was identifiable before 1975 as Weston's arms. (Grandisson's own arms are, however, earlier in the fabric, at 199.)

 Apart from these examples, and perhaps the concentration of delightfully inhabited foliage bosses in the East Presbytery Aisle, the distribution of subjects is random. The world of the vault is rich with portraits and plants, Green Men and Saints, heraldry, beasts and biblical heroes. In addition to the Coronation of the Virgin and Symbols of the Evangelists already mentioned, there is a Coronation of the Virgin at boss 286 and corbels G' and P, and scenes from Biblical or Apocryphal sources appear in The Crucifixion (57,  158,  202, 321, 363), Samson and the Lion (67, 185, 219), perhaps The Stoning of Semei (spread across 79 and 78), Christ in Glory (225, 264,369), The Beheading of St Paul (71), perhaps a Crucifixion of St Andrew (191B, 285), anAgnus Dei (355), John the Baptist (166), St Paul (143, 159, 289).

 Some subjects have been correctly identified only since their colour has been cleaned: 184 is a lion who fights a manticore, rather than one who breaths life into its cubs, and on 195 the tantalisingly unidentified king cannot represent Christ, as his hair is grey and he is exquisitely shod in red-laced shoes.

Just as important as their subject matter is the sculptural quality of the bosses. Its range extends from the pitiful modern replacement bosses in the Chapel of St James (140 and 141) to the superb work of the Botanical Master at the east end, and of the Master of the Lions in the east bay of the Nave and the Crossing area (e.g. 184, 185, 188, 192, 254, 260).

Bosses are primarily keystones, but they also serve to obviate the unsightly conjunction of ribs—sometimes as many as eight. They replace what would be a mass of masonry joints with a lively play of curving forms cleverly contained by the essential circularity of the outline, yet running up into the “depth” of the boss where it meets the vault between the ribs. The best carving exploits the potential of a boss's functional form. Many medieval “hands” are apparent in the bosses, the least competent producing a dull pudding-like regularity of form (for example the repetitive bulgy leaves on a number in the Choir, and flat foliage in the Nave Aisles). In contrast, work of the Botanical Master and his school in the East Presbytery Aisle area shows a brilliance comparable with that shown in the well-known “leaves of Southwell”.43 His work creates a sense that the foliage and fruit has grown into position, and yet he retains a formal control over composition which is far from merely naturalistic.

The same sense of vigour within disciplined shapes is apparent in the later work of Stapledon's episcopate. The bay at the east end of the Nave, already mentioned as a thematic group, is among the most powerful work. Samson magnificently straddles the lion which he is about to tear apart (boss 185). Perhaps because the scene traditionally prefigures the Christ's release of souls from the mouth of Hell by the power of the Cross, the main lines of the design form a cross, the upright of which is Samson's golden garment. Samson's luxuriant hair, in which his God-given strength resided, flows round his head, and is balanced by the golden tail of the unhappy lion, under his feet. In 184, nearby, the essential circularity of the boss is defined by the animals' curved spines, the central areas being occupied by a marvellous scrabble of brown and grey paws and claws. The colours clarify the design: against what was a scarlet background stems define the main movements from which spring the gilded leaves filling the sides of the boss.

The sculptural quality of the Chancel is very difficult to assess (even when looking at the bosses themselves, let alone in reproduction) because we have no photographic record of it before its repainting in the 1870s. The deficiencies of Scott's colouring when applied to medieval objects has already been observed.44 The flattening effect of it in the Presbytery, on some of the most lyrical carving on the vault, is particularly unfortunate: for example, it is not at first easy to discern in boss 77 the marvellous flow of foliage round the four faces which are now so pasty. It is also easy to miss the varied delicacy of the foliage capitals in both Presbytery and Choir, for example those supporting the vaulting ribs (e.g. Vaulting-Shaft Capital A) and flanking the clerestory windows (notably the six flanking the Great East Window).

 

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IIb. THE COLOUR

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the medieval colour on the bosses and corbels is the way in which it invariably serves to reveal rather than conceal the nature of the three-dimensional form beneath it. The medieval painters at Exeter were masters of techniques which pass unremarked today. The limited range of materials available to them included many whose quirks would not be tolerated by a modern decorator, yet the early artists respected the character of each pigment and exploited them with wonderful skill. We should consider this palette and its limitations, in order to understand how the bosses may have aged, and the problems faced by the artists.45 

The materials included many thousand foils of silver and gold. It was well understood by medieval gilders and mosaicists that whereas light reflecting off gold leaf is golden, light transmitted through it is green. A reddish or orangey size under the gold was therefore used in order to kill this green and create deep black shadows, which reveal the subtle undulations of the foliage carving. (This elementary knowledge of optics has been forgotten by many modern gilders, who naively use a chrome yellow size that reflects a greenish, brassy light and flattens the shadows.)

Azurite is a gritty pigment which becomes pale if too finely ground. Its special character lies in the way the light bounces off its tiny blue crystals. It loses its wonderful blueness if mixed with oil. Where it was used pure, as it was throughout the Chancel (overpainted in 1870) one would expect the binder to have been glue or eggwhite. This had to be applied separately from all the other colours, which are bound with oil. Indigo, the Asian relative of woad—some of Exeter's was imported from Baghdad—was also used, for example on the caparisons of boss 174. It is fugitive (not light-fast), and the wings of the blue dragon on 185 no longer appear blue. The highly expensive ultramarine, made from lapis lazuli, has not been identified on Exeter's bosses.

Verdigris is a common, transparent green which survives well on limestone. It may be made into a sumptuous, grass-green copper resinate varnish, but the resin darkens with exposure to light, so both the foliage stems and dragons of Exeter appear much browner than when they were new.46 White lead, however, is a very stable pigment when mixed with oil. The slightly grey teeth of certain animals and darkened complexions (e.g. 272A) probably result from discolouration of egg-white varnish. Only when the medium decays is the pigment itself turned grey by sulphur in the atmosphere. It continues to provide a strong light-reflecting undercoat for the other colours, with which it is also often mixed.

The backgrounds of Bishop Stapledon's bosses, behind the foliage stems, were primed in the workshop, using opaque red lead (minium); this was both softened and enriched by the brilliant vermilion used around the mortar pointing and untidy edges of gilding executed after the bosses were in place. Vermilion is the brightest scarlet of all, but lacks covering power and is expensive, so it is applied thinly over the red lead. To this day, where protected from the light amongst the deep undercutting of the stems, these brilliant reds seem to flicker far more subtly than the crude, flat surface of a modern recolouring.

The transparent softness of grapes and other fruit is suggested by highly refined red ochre applied thinly over a white undercoat. They are not just painted purple. Another, less transparent ochre, was used for backgrounds to Bishop Grandisson's bosses, augmented with red lead only on the just-visible edges. Earth reds are very stable but not bright. In contrast, there is a costly crimson lake—an organic dye on a colourless base—on the faded robes of Christ (264) and the Virgin (corbel K, earlier painting).

Analysis of samples from the bosses has located all the pigments identifiable in the Fabric Roll entries, together with the metal leaf. Cheaper pigments are not mentioned in the Fabric Rolls:47 there are various iron oxide ochres, yellow and brown, wherewith the lions and fabulous beasts were modelled and dappled. Their whiskers, the hairs between their toes, their eyelashes, eyes and white teeth are drawn or outlined in carbon black. Charcoal gives a brownish-black, while a blue-black is obtained from soot (the latter mixed with white gives almost a pale blue—probably that found on the beard of 263).

In the literature on English medieval sculpture it is rare to find any reference to the colour which adorned interior and exterior figures alike. When some fleeting reference is found it often implies that all medieval paint was crude and gaudy.48 Documentary evidence alone should have been sufficient to prove that techniques used on painted sculpture were as refined as those of the best panel paintings.49 Many superb polychromed oak roodscreens survive from the later Middle Ages, the finest being in East Anglia, but most stone sculpture has lost all but fragments of its colour. At Exeter we have not only the tomb of Bishop Bronscombe (d.1280) in the Chapel of St Gabriel, but also some forty-eight bosses retaining almost intact fourteenth-century colour, which provide an unrivalled opportunity to see at first hand what the medieval artists intended their work to look like.

The reason for our modern difficulty in appreciating medieval aesthetic lies in our post-industrial taste for natural surfaces of wood and stone. To medieval man these natural substances were commonplace, and a building was unfinished until its surfaces carried the work of man's hand. Another aspect of our modern taste may be traced from the Renaissance, when unpainted statues were derived from classical figures denuded of their polychrome. The eyes of those unpainted figures are given life and direction by lines incised to indicate iris and pupil. The whole expression of a medieval head carved with blank eyeballs is changed when these are painted. Clearly polychrome was an inherent part of the design. We shall never fully appreciate how much evidence of the medieval sensibility and world-view has been lost with the polychrome layer.50 Delicate and complicated carving (of inhabited foliage in particular) is decipherable only when boldly coloured, although the colour in its turn often contains more detail than can ever have been seen from floor level. No surface is left plain. Such craftsmanship is not justified by any earthly usefulness: it is enough that it exists unseen, like a votive candle in an empty church.