Sculpture 18: the pious pelican

Pelican carving, Old Vicarage, Great Chesterford, Essex

This small wooden panel has a late 15th-century carving of a “pelican in her piety”, a suitable Christian symbol for the exterior of the timber-framed former vicarage next to the church. Passers-by can easily see this from the street or the adjacent churchyard.

It was popularly supposed that, because of the way the pelican fed its young with regurgitated food from its beak, it was removing flesh and blood from its breast to nourish them.

An added element of this grotesque notion is that it did this to revive its young which had been killed by a serpent. From this fiction grew the idea that the pelican somehow symbolised or even prefigured Jesus redeeming mankind by shedding his own blood and defeating the devil.

Stone head 14

Head of John the Baptist, Victoria & Albert Museum

Arms of Bristol Merchant Taylors Guild above door

Above An alabaster head of John the Baptist as demanded by Salome, in the V&A. English, 15th century
Below The porch hood of the Guild of Merchant Taylors Guild, central Bristol, showing their arms and, on the left, the head of John the Baptist on a platter

Stone head 13

Girning Romanesque stone head, British Museum

This grotesque is a girning exhibitionist, a face-puller; if you look carefully,

Abstract 3

If I remember right, this is part of the design on the side of an early medieval sarcophagus in the V&A Museum.

The frequent repetition of the six-pointed motif as star or flower is often found on graves and grave markers.
It could well be, as I’ve seen suggested elsewhere, an apotropaic device, designed to ward off evil.

Didn’t stop it being carted off to a Museum though.

Stone head 5

Newport Church, Pembrokeshire

Lozenge-shaped eyes, ovoid face, slit mouth: this is a classic ‘Celtic’ head.

Although St Mary’s church in Newport, Pembrokeshire was given the usual Victorian makeover, this carving from the previous structure survived by being placed discreetly behind the chancel arch.
Presumably so as not so offend Victorian aesthetics.
Any other medieval sculpture sadly now seems lost to us.

I wonder if the nostrils have been added subsequently: such stone heads often just had a bulbous nose.
It’s very likely this one was damaged by an excess of Puritan zeal.

Stone head 3: companion

The companion to Stone Head 2, another of the ancient faces on the 15th-century Refectory in Congresbury, North Somerset.

He looks to be frozen in the act of saying something witty.
I wish I had something witty to add to this, but I’ll leave it to others to think up an appropriate comment.

Stone head 2: vicarage

Stone head, Congresbury, Somerset

One of many stone heads on the Refectory, the former vicarage, built in the 15th century.
This is such an individual face it’s tempting to believe this is an actual portrait of someone connected with the village church.

Stone head 1: gob

Waterspout, St Davids Cathedral, Pembrokeshire, Wales

Though this could be a Victorian example, the medieval mind was no less scatological than modern schoolkids: the idea of a devil from hell gobbing at you from a height clearly appealed to certain mentalities.

Not mine. Obviously.