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Arthurian Motifs in Medieval Lives
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Popular Culture Association 29th Annual Meeting
Arthurian Legend Section
March 31‑April 3, 1999
When the Tristan legend does appear in a public setting, it is usually found in an obscure, hard-to-view spot. The S. Floret murals, for instance, are located high up on the walls of the great hall, near the ceiling, which would have rendered them very difficult to view.[i] These murals once again represent a montage of aspects of the tradition rather than a unified story. Inscriptions indicate that the scenes were taken from the Meliadus,[ii] with the exception of the “Tryst Beneath the Tree,” the most popular of all the Tristan motifs--and a scene that is not found in the Meliadus, though it does occur in the Prose Tristan, one of the sources for the Meliadus.[iii]
Six embroideries of the Tristan legend owe their story to a tale that served as a source for Eilhart von Oberg and Gottfried, with Eilhart owing far more to the source than Gottfried.[iv] Three of these embroideries were likely the work of nuns at Wienhausen.[v] One, the Luneburg Embroidery, came from the village church of Emern and was most likely produced in lower Saxony in the fourteenth century.[vi] Another, the Erfurt Tablecloth (c. 1370), originally came from the Benedictine nunnery at Wurzburg.[vii] The sixth, the South Kensington Embroidery (ca. 1370), may have been designed by the same person who designed the Erfurt Tablecloth, given the correlation of scenes between the two embroideries. Another scene of Tristan and Isolde was added in one corner by a different hand. No other contextual information is available,[viii] but some scholars have speculated that the embroideries were intended as wedding gifts. As such, they were meant to be used in private rather than in public spaces, and the moral content of their message directed at the wife.
Beroul’s Tristan, or a source akin to it, provided the images on the ivory casket in the Hermitage.[ix] Produced at Paris (1300-1340), the casket was intended for secular use by a lord or lady.[x] Some panels contain scenes that may not be from Beroul or which may have appeared in a part of Beroul that is now lost.[xi] A related casket from the same workshop shows one sequence of scenes from the Folie Tristan and of Tristan in a pose that is likely copied from a Psalter in conjunction with scenes of other lovers.[xii]
Two mid-thirteenth-century bed-quilts of Sicilian origin depict a strand of the Tristan legend that eventually found written expression in the Tristano Riccardiano, the Tavola Rotunda and the Cuento de Tristan de Leonis.[xiii] The scenes are not sequential; instead to follow the story as we know it requires jumping back and forth, from on quilt to the other. The coverlets were most likely wedding gifts.[xiv]
The “Tryst Beneath the Tree”, which depicts King Mark hiding in a tree above Tristan and Isolde as the lovers meet, is by far the most common Tristan motif in medieval art.[xv] It spans several media: ivories, crystal, wood, embroidery, and stone.
The items are just as varied: caskets, corbels, misericords, and combs. But all of the images I have examined to date were either located in a place that is impossible to view, in a semi-private space, or intended for use in an exclusively private space, with the last of these three divisions predominating.
Lancelot and Gawain: Knights on the Edge
Lancelot’s story also occupied private spaces within the manuscript tradition, but in very specific forms. Lancelot paints murals of himself and Guinevere in the Vulgate Lancelot.[xvi] Arthur views the pictures in the Mort Artu.[xvii] The Vulgate says that the pictures of the love affair were painted in the cell where Morgan held Lancelot.[xviii] In other words, the space was about as private and secular as it was possible to get. In the real world, portrayals of Lancelot are indeed found primarily in private spaces. For instance, his legend is depicted on several ivory caskets that were mass-produced in Paris.[xix] In more public spaces, Lancelot’s figure did not have the same concept of “sacredness” attached to it that Arthur’s did.[xx] For instance, it was okay to whitewash over Lancleot, which is what happened to the only known wall-painting of Lancelot in England.[xxi]
Gawain’s stories from the manuscript tradition, in contrast, often appeared in borderline spaces, locations that were often somehow both private and public. The Perlesvaus, for instance, says that the story of his life was painted in a semi-private, sacred place: on the walls of a chapel in a castle that falls to ruins and is inhabited only by a priest and a clerk when Arthur and Gawain find it.[xxii] In Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Krone (ca. 1220) Gawain sees the tale of one of his adventures on a golden platter.[xxiii] In this case, the context is public rather than private, but the viewing itself is of a rather private nature, since no one else looking at the platter is actually the person depicted there.
When Gawain’s story appears in a private space, it does so in conjunction with a legend from Lancelot’s corpus, and this union happens most frequently on ivory caskets.[xxiv] These caskets were often given as wedding gifts and tended to reside in the bedrooms of the married couple. The tale probably served on as a sermon on morality. Similarly, when Lancelot’s tale appears in a borderline region, as in the case of the capital of the nave of S. Pierre in Caen, the presence of Gawain’s story seems to have influenced the choice to use Lancelot’s legend as well.
Perceval: The Divine Fool
Tales of Perceval were favored for frescoes in dining rooms, but his story also appears on caskets that were intended for use in bed chambers.[xxv] The scenes are taken from several MS traditions, though Chretien’s Conte del Graal and the Estoire and Queste from the Vulgate are the most common sources. Just as the images are found in both public and private spaces, there is an ambiguity in attitudes toward this Grail knight, who, like Lancelot, has his image painted over in some of the murals.[xxvi]
Galahad: The Holy Knight
Galahad, the knight renowned for his chastity, has a curious motif attached to him in the visual arts. Outside of the textual tradition, he appears to show up exclusively in an image in which he obtains the keys to the Castle of Maidens. In three of the depictions, the visual commentary is relegated to a side panel. In six (one plaque and five caskets), the image shares the scene with Enyas’s rescue of the damsel from the wild man, forming an apparent commentary on lust versus chastity. And in one instance the image occurs in conjunction with scenes from tales of Lancelot and Gawain, most likely due to the relationship of Lancelot and Galahad as father and son. So other than a comment on the value of chastity, Galahad appears to be absent from the visual arts.[xxvii]
Ivain, Wigalois, and Garel
The murals of Ivain at Schmalkalden (c. 1250) were found in what is now the cellar.[xxviii]But at the time the murals were created, the portion of the building in question was the ground floor of the residence of the Landgrave’s steward.Although the space in question was not open to the general public, the area comprised a public rather than a private area within the Landgrave’s residence.This is typical for the stories of Ivain, whose image is also found beneath at least five misericords.[xxix]An embroidery (ca. 1324) from Freiburg, in contrast, seems to have been intended solely for a private space.The embroidery was made for Johannes Malterer and his wife.[xxx]
[i]. Loomis and Loomis (1939:57); the murals are frescoes.
[ii]. Loomis and Loomis 1939:58; the Melidaus was derived by combining the Prose Tristan with the Palamedes.
[iii]. Paintings of Tristan also appear on the wood ceiling o f the great hall of the Palazzo Chiaramonte in Palermo (Loomis and Loomis 1939:1961). King Martin, one of the owners of the palazzo, decorated his “horse-trappings” with images from the Lancelot/Guinevere and Tristan/Isolde stories (Loomis and Loomis 1939:61).
[iv].Loomis and Loomis, p. 50.
[v].From Weinhausen, Loomis and Loomis, pp. 51-53; M. Schuette, Gestickte Bildteppiche des Mittelalters, I, Leipzig, 1927, i, xvi; H.W.H. Mithoff, Archiv fur Nidersachsens Kunstgeschichte, Hanover, 1849, II, 9; J. Lessing, Wandteppiche u. Decken des Mittelalters, Pl. 11-13; Pantheon, I, 1928, 89; Burlington Mag., LII, 1928, 27. The inscription that accompanies the oldest Weinhausen embroidery (1300-1325) does not follow the order of the scenes and misidentifies some of the characters in the scenes (Loomis and Loomis, 51). Details on the embroidery do not mactch any surviving written MS and sometimes completely contradict Eilhart and Gottfried. No contextual information other than the place of production is available for this hanging. The second embroidery (1325) was used on the altar steps. The inscriptions seem to have been taken from a French source rather than Eilhart or Gottfried, and the scene with Mark in bed does not match the details from Eilhart, suggesting that the tale was indeed taken from another source. The third embroidery (1340), and the original context is uncertain beyond the place of production. Once again, the inscription and scenes vary distinctly from any surviving written source.
[vi].Loomis and Loomis, pp. 53-54; Schuette, pl. 2, p. 38; W. Reinecke, Wegweiser durch die Sammlungen des Museumvereins fur das Furstentum Luneburg, ed. 3, 1927.
[vii].Loomis and Loomis, p. 56; Anzeiger fur Kunde der Deutschen Vorzeit, 1866, col. 15; A. Overmann, Aeltere Kunstdenkmaler . . . der Stadt Erfurt, Erfurt, 1911, p. 344. Eilhart was the main source, but part was taken from Gottfried and some details are not found in any extant version.
[viii].Loomis and Loomis, pp. 54-55; D. Rock, _South Kensington Museum, Textile Fabrics, Catalogue of the Collection_ (1870), p. 77. The embroidery has been mutilated.
[ix].Loomis and Loomis, p. 55; Koechlin, Ivoires gothiques Paris, 1924, I, 7-33, 360-367, 517, II, 465; Romance Review, VIII, 1917, 196; Pantheon, I, 1928, 75-80.
[x].The casket may have originally been designed without a lid or its original lid may have been lost; the current lid is a forgery. Loomis and Loomis, p. 55-56.
[xi].Ranke in Medieval Studies in Memory of Gertrude Schoepperle Loomis, New York, 1927, p. 87; Tristramssaga, ed. E. Kolbing, chap. 87; cf. Romance REview, VIII, 203 f.
[xii].Loomis and Loomis, p. 56; A. Darcel, Collection Basilewsky, 1874, Texte, p. 196, Pantehon, I, 77, 80; Folie Tristan, ed. Bedier, Paris, 1907; Folie Tristan de Berne, ed. Hoepffner, Paris, 1934; W.H. Grench, C.B. Hale, Middle English Metircal Romances, New York, 1930, p. 938, vv. 169-173; Cf. Oxford Folie, vv. 209 ff.
[xiii]. Loomis and Loomis 1939:63.
[xiv]. Loomis and Loomis 1939:63.
[xv]. Loomis and Loomis 1939:66-69.
[xvi]. Loomis and Loomis 1939:16-17; Malory, who drew on the Vulgate, also describes these pictures.
[xvii]. H.O. Sommer, Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, V (Wash., 1912), pp. 216 ff. and VI, 238; Mort Artu, ed. Frappier (P., 1936), p. 49.
[xviii]. This detail also appears in Malory.
[xix]. Loomis and Loomis 1939:70.
[xx]. The one exception to this rule is the “Sword Bridge” scene on the Caen Capital in the nave of S. Pierre (Loomis and Loomis 1939:71).
[xxi]. Loomis and Loomis 1939:173; “Dugdale’s Warwickshire mentioned briefly a late fresco in the hall of Tamworth Castle of Sir Lancelot du Lac and Sir Tarquin. But so little vale was attached ot the painting, the only painting of Arthurian romance in England of which we have record, that it was white-washed over in 1783. [Vol. II, p. 1138; The painting was probably done between 1554 and 1576, and represented two knights of gigantic size jousting. Cf. Birmingham and Midland Archaeological Institute (1878-79), po. 60; C.F. Plamer, History of the Town and Castle of Tamworth (1845), pp. 368, 417; Gentleman’s Magazine, LVI (1784), 501.”
[xxii]. Loomis and Loomis 1939:17-18; a similar “discovery” scene occurs in the Perlesvaus (ed. Nitze and Jenkins, I, Chicago, 1932, 307f.); High History of the Holy Grail, trans. Sebastian Evans, Branch XXIII, title I.
[xxiii]. Henrich von dem Türlin, Krone, ed. School, vv. 8845-944. Lancelot and Tristam appear on an actual platter of this nature (Loomis and Loomis 1938:70).
[xxiv]. Loomis and Loomis 1939:5, 72.
[xxv]. Loomis and Loomis 1939:73-76.
[xxvi]. Loomis and Loomis 1939:75.
[xxvii]. Galahad’s tale from the Queste is depicted on ivory caskets, which were probably intended as wedding gifts and, in the same manner as other such caskets, were probably intended as visual sermons on morality.
[xxviii]. The images were inspired by the Munich Tristan.
[xxix]. The tale is taken from “Ywain and Gawain.” There is one original and four imitations: Lincoln Cathedral (1375-1400; the probable original), Boston Church, Chester Cathedral, the Chapel at New College, Oxford (ca. 1480), and St. Peter per Mountergate Church, Norwich.
[xxx]. Malterer was a banker. His situation was comparable to that of Niklas Vintler of Schloss Runklestein.