Fig. 1. The Miraculous Assembly of the Apostles, c.1450–55, 955 x 535cm, The National Trust (Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk), on loan to the church of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich
Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia will run at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich from 14 September 2013 to 24 February 2014. The exhibition will feature a panel from the church of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich. The panel is one of six surviving from a series originally of fifteen, depicting the apocryphal story from the Golden Legend of the Death, Funeral and Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The panel depicts the Miraculous Assembly of the Apostles.
The series was originally in the top section of the main lights of the east window of the north chancel chapel and was given by Robert Toppes in c.1450–55. The six surviving panels were moved to the east window of the chancel in around 1815, along with glass from the lower section of the Toppes Window and elsewhere. Three of these panels remain in this location, and the other three were removed in c.1840; two went to Felbrigg Hall, and the third ended up in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow.
Fig. 2. Detail, The Miraculous Assembly of the Apostles, c.1450–55, 955 x 535cm, The National Trust (Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk), on loan to the church of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich
In the 1980s, the National Trust allowed one of the two panels at Felbrigg to be loaned to St Peter Mancroft. It was placed on display in a light-box in the treasury in the north transept. It is this panel that will feature in the exhibition. When not on loan to exhibitions (it was at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2003), the panel is still kept in the treasury at St Peter Mancroft.
The panel will be viewed alongside an extraordinarily diverse selection of the visual arts: paintings, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, glass, and jewellery, photography, graphic design, fashion and costume, product and textile design – from the prehistoric period to the present day. It aims to celebrate the rich and distinctive culture and artistic heritage of East Anglia, from antiquity through to the present day, and will mark the unveiling of the newly refurbished galleries by Norman Foster.
See the website for more details.
Fig. 3. Detail, The Miraculous Assembly of the Apostles, c.1450–55, 955 x 535cm, The National Trust (Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk), on loan to the church of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich
St Peter Mancroft is the subect of an important British CVMA monograph by committee member David King. The book was the fruit of many years of research, and copies are available via the CVMA (GB) website.
