Neil Stratford

Last updated

Neil Stratford FSA (b. 26 April 1938), [1] a London born medievalist and Keeper Emeritus of Medieval and Later Antiquities at the British Museum, is recognised as a leading authority on Romanesque and Gothic art and sculpture. [2] He was one of the founding members of the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland and is the Herbert Franke Chair at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres [1] where he is an elected foreign member. [3]

Contents

Education

Educated at Manor House School, Horsham from 1946 to 1951 and then Marlborough College, where he studied Classics, Neil Stratford was conscripted into the Coldstream Guards for his mandatory two year period of National Service [4] (1956–58) before continuing his education. He went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge to read for a BA, graduating in 1961, and then onto study at the Courtauld Institute of Art. It was here that his interest in Romanesque sculpture was kindled and he undertook research for a dissertation on the Romanesque sculpture at the Abbey Church of La Madeleine, Vézelay, supervised by the medievalist Christopher Hohler. [5]

Career

Stratford lectured at Westfield College before he was appointed to the position of Keeper of Medieval and Later Antiquities at the British Museum; a post he held from 1975 until his retirement from museum life in 1998. [1]

During this time Stratford not only published a number of books and articles but was also on the Selection Committee for the exhibition English Romanesque Art 1066–1200 held at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1984, [6] for which George Zarnecki was the lead curator. [7] Stratford and Zarnecki worked together again in 1988 when they were instrumental in founding the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Great Britain and Ireland (CRSBI) following their submission of a proposal for funding to the British Academy [8] who continue to oversee the project. [9] Stratford is currently its Chairman [10] and also presented the online 2020 CRSBI Annual Lecture ‘Cluny and Vézelay: The Paradox of the Romanesque Capital in Burgundy’. [11] Stratford edited the two volume festschrift for George Zarnecki, published in 1987 for his 70th birthday in 1985, and, in the forward, acknowledged his regard for Zarnecki, who he said “has quite literally rewritten a whole chapter of England’s artistic history, taking the sculpture and “minor arts” of the Norman period and placing them firmly in the wider spectrum of European Romanesque”. [7]

Stratford was appointed the Leverhulme Senior Research Fellow at the British Academy in 1991, [3] and worked on the international project, Corpus de la sculpture de Cluny as Chairman of the Scientific Committee. The research was published under his editorship alongside Brigitte Maurice-Chabard & David Walsh. In an interview with Alicia Guzman for the University of Rochester 2010-2011 Newsletter, David Walsh recalls how he met Neil Stratford, who was visiting the excavation at Bordesley Abbey, on which Walsh had been working since 1972. Stratford later asked Walsh to meet him at the British Museum and invited him to participate in a new project involving the Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy and the publication of the findings of the excavation work. Following twenty years of field work and writing, the work was finally published in 2010. [12]

Following his retirement from the British Museum, Stratford has continued to publish articles and books both in French [13] and English and has been honoured for his work on both sides of the Channel. He is celebrated in France, not only for his work at Cluny, but for his work on the chronology of the Burgundian Romanesque sculptures at Vézelay and the Cathédrale Saint-Lazare d'Autun . [3] He was awarded the gold medal by the French Archaeological Society in 2011 (see below). He was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton in 1998 [14] and Visiting Professor of medieval art and archaeology at the École Nationale des Chartes in Paris in 2002/3. [5] He has also spent time at the École Pratique des Hautes Études IVth section, (2001-2) [15] and Florida State University in Tallahassee. [1]

In 2014 Stratford was on the Advisory Panel and a contributor to the British Archaeological Association’s biennial series of International Romanesque Conferences held in Barcelona, ‘Romanesque Patrons and Processes. Design and Instrumentality in the Art and Architecture of Romanesque Europe’. [16]

His knowledge on ivories [17] particularly the Lewis Chessmen, for which he undertook research for the British Museum publication, is still sought after and he provided Sotheby’s Auction House with an historical account of the discovery of the Lewis Chessmen in the 19th century for inclusion in its catalogue when a missing piece was discovered and sold for £735,000 in July 2019. [18]

Stratford took photographs for the Corpus de la sculpture de Cluny publication [12] and, photographs attributed to him, are also held in the Conway Library, whose archive, of mainly architectural images, is in the process of being digitised as part of the wider Courtauld Connects project. [19]

Honours and appointments

Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, appointed 1 January 1976 [20]

Chairman of the Fabric Advisory Committee of St Albans Cathedral 1995 [14]

Grand prix de La Société Française d’Archéologie in 2011 [16]

Honorary foreign correspondent of the Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France (Paris), elected 3 October 2018 [21]

Foreign Member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres from 2020, [3] having formerly been a foreign associate elected 7 December 2012 [1]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

Romanesque architecture Architectural style of Medieval Europe

Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of medieval Europe characterized by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque style, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 11th century, this later date being the most commonly held. In the 12th century it developed into the Gothic style, marked by pointed arches. Examples of Romanesque architecture can be found across the continent, making it the first pan-European architectural style since Imperial Roman architecture. The Romanesque style in England is traditionally referred to as Norman architecture.

Lewis chessmen Group of 12th-century chess pieces

The Lewis chessmen or Uig chessmen, named after the island or the bay where they were found, are a group of distinctive 12th-century chess pieces, along with other game pieces, most of which are carved from walrus ivory. Discovered in 1831 on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, they may constitute some of the few complete, surviving medieval chess sets, although it is not clear if a set as originally made can be assembled from the pieces. When found, the hoard contained 93 artifacts: 78 chess pieces, 14 tablemen and one belt buckle. Today, 82 pieces are owned and usually exhibited by the British Museum in London, and the remaining 11 are at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Burgundy Region of France

Burgundy is a historical territory and a former administrative region of east-central France. It is named for the Burgundians, an East Germanic people who moved westwards beyond the Rhine during the late Roman period.

Vézelay Abbey

Vézelay Abbey is a Benedictine and Cluniac monastery in Vézelay in the east-central French department of Yonne. It was constructed between 1120 and 1150. The Benedictine abbey church, now the Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, with its complex program of imagery in sculpted capitals and portals, is one of the outstanding masterpieces of Burgundian Romanesque art and architecture. Sacked by the Huguenots in 1569, the building suffered neglect in the 17th and the 18th centuries and some further damage during the period of the French Revolution.

Musée de Cluny Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris, France

The Musée de Cluny, also known as Musée national du Moyen Âge – Thermes et hôtel de Cluny, is a museum of the Middle Ages in Paris, France. It is located in the Latin quarter in the 5th arrondissement of Paris at 6 Place Paul-Painlevé, south of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, between the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Rue Saint-Jacques.

Gislebertus

Gislebertus, Giselbertus or Ghiselbertus, sometimes "of Autun", was a French Romanesque sculptor, whose decoration of the Cathedral of Saint Lazare at Autun, France – consisting of numerous doorways, tympanums and capitals – represents some of the most original work of the period.

Romanesque art Artistic style of Europe from 1000 AD to the 13c

Romanesque art is the art of Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 12th century, or later depending on region. The preceding period is known as the Pre-Romanesque period. The term was invented by 19th-century art historians, especially for Romanesque architecture, which retained many basic features of Roman architectural style – most notably round-headed arches, but also barrel vaults, apses, and acanthus-leaf decoration – but had also developed many very different characteristics. In Southern France, Spain, and Italy there was an architectural continuity with the Late Antique, but the Romanesque style was the first style to spread across the whole of Catholic Europe, from Sicily to Scandinavia. Romanesque art was also greatly influenced by Byzantine art, especially in painting, and by the anti-classical energy of the decoration of the Insular art of the British Isles. From these elements was forged a highly innovative and coherent style.

Vézelay Commune in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France

Vézelay is a commune in the department of Yonne in the north-central French region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. It is a defensible hill town famous for Vézelay Abbey. The town and its 11th-century Romanesque Basilica of St Magdalene are designated UNESCO World Heritage sites.

<i>Ronde-bosse</i>

Ronde-bosse, en ronde bosse or encrusted enamel is an enamelling technique developed in France in the late 14th century that produces small three-dimensional figures, or reliefs, largely or entirely covered in enamel. The new method involved the partial concealment of the underlying gold, or sometimes silver, from which the figure was formed. It differs from older techniques which all produced only enamel on a flat or curved surface, and mostly, like champlevé, normally used non-precious metals, such as copper, which were gilded to look like gold. In the technique of enamel en ronde-bosse small figures are created in gold or silver and their surfaces lightly roughened to provide a key for the enamel, which is applied as a paste and fired. In places the framework may only be wire.

Gloucester Candlestick

The Gloucester Candlestick is an elaborately decorated English Romanesque gilt-bronze candlestick, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It was made for Gloucester Cathedral between 1104 and 1113, and is one of the outstanding survivals of English Romanesque metalwork.

<i>Musée national des Monuments Français</i>

The Musée national des Monuments Français is today a museum of plaster casts of French monuments located in the Palais de Chaillot, 1, place du Trocadéro et du 11 Novembre, Paris, France. It now forms part of the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, and is open daily except Tuesday. An admission fee is charged.

George Zarnecki

George Jerzy Zarnecki, CBE, FBA, FSA was a Polish Professor of the History of Art. He was a scholar of Medieval art and English Romanesque sculpture, an area of study in which he did pioneering research. From 1961 to 1974 he was a deputy director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

Peter Erik Lasko was a British art historian, Professor of Visual Art at the University of East Anglia, from 1965 to 1974, Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, from 1974–85 and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Presentation miniature

A presentation miniature or dedication miniature is a miniature painting often found in illuminated manuscripts, in which the patron or donor is presented with a book, normally to be interpreted as the book containing the miniature itself. The miniature is thus symbolic, and presumably represents an event in the future. Usually it is found at the start of the volume, as a frontispiece before the main text, but may also be placed at the end, as in the Vivian Bible, or at the start of a particular text in a collection.

Alain Erlande-Brandenburg French art historian

Alain Erlande-Brandenburg was a French art historian and honorary general curator for heritage, a specialist on Gothic and Romanesque art.

French Romanesque architecture Medieval architectural style

Romanesque architecture appeared in France at the end of the 10th century, with the development of feudal society and the rise and spread of monastic orders, particularly the Benedictines, which built many important abbeys and monasteries in the style. It continued to dominate religious architecture until the appearance of French Gothic architecture in the Île-de-France between about 1140–1150.

St Marys Church, Dymock

St Mary's Church, Dymock is a Church of England parish church in the center of the village of Dymock in Gloucestershire, England. It is a Grade I listed building.

Game pieces of the Lewis chessmen hoard 79 chessmen found in Scotland

The ninety-three game pieces of the Lewis chessmen hoard were found on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Medieval in origin, they were first exhibited in Edinburgh in 1831 but it is unclear how much earlier they had been discovered. The hoard comprised seventy-eight distinctive chess pieces and fifteen other non-chess pieces, nearly all carved from walrus tusk ivory, and they are now displayed at the British Museum in London and National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh. Another chess piece, which turned up in 1964 and in 2019 was attributed to have come from the original hoard, now belongs to an undisclosed owner.

Nicola Coldstream, FSA, is a British architectural historian and academic with special interests in the 13th and 14th centuries. Coldstream studied History and Fine Arts at Cambridge University and obtained her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Deborah Kahn is an American art historian, author, and academic, specializing in European Medieval art and architecture. She is an eminent figure in the study of Canterbury Cathedral collection. Kahn has acted as a consultant on sculpture and conservation to Canterbury Cathedral and Lincoln Cathedral. She became Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Art History at Columbia University from 1986 to 1987. She went on to work at Princeton University, from 1989 to 1991; before joining Boston University in 1996, where she is currently Associate Professor, in the department of art history. She is the author of two books, as well as numerous articles and conference papers.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "STRATFORD Neil". www.aibl.fr (in French). 2011-02-17. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  2. "Studies in Burgundian Romanesque Sculpture – Vol I Text – Pindar Press". pindarpress.co.uk. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Salon 290". Society of Antiquaries of London. 2020-02-14. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  4. "National Service". www.parliament.uk. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  5. 1 2 "Neil Stratford". Dictionary of Art Historians.
  6. Robinson, James. "Capital, Lewes Priory, Sussex" (PDF). British Museum Magazine Spring 2005.
  7. 1 2 Crossley, Paul. "Obituary George Zarnecki 1915–2008" (PDF). British Academy.
  8. "Browse In Aesthetic Movement, 1200–1300, Format: Image, Format: Article | Oxford Art Online | Oxford Art". Oxford Art Online. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  9. "Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland". The British Academy. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  10. "CONTENTdm". www.vads.ac.uk. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  11. "Online Lecture: 'Cluny and Vézelay: The Paradox of the Romanesque Capital in Burgundy', Professor Neil Stratford, CRSBI Annual Lecture 2020". Medieval Art Research. 2020-08-25. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  12. 1 2 "2010-2011 Newsletter Interview with David Walsh by Alicia Guzman" (PDF). University of Rochester.
  13. Stratford, Neil (1995). "Contribution à l'histoire de la sculpture des maisons romanes de Cluny". Bulletin Monumental. 153 (3): 221–242. doi:10.3406/bulmo.1995.3606.
  14. 1 2 "Neil Stratford - Scholars | Institute for Advanced Study". www.ias.edu. 2019-12-09. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  15. "GRIM". irhis-recherche.univ-lille3.fr. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  16. 1 2 ROMANESQUE PATRONS AND PROCESSES; Design and Instrumentality in the Art and Architecture of Romanesque Europe. Routledge, Abingdon & New York. 2018. pp. xi. ISBN   978-1-138-47704-9.
  17. Glueck, Grace (1978-01-11). "Met Says It Bought Rare Ivory Plaque". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  18. "Catalogue Old Master Sculpture & Works of Art". Sotheby's.
  19. "Who made the Conway Library?". Digital Media. 2020-06-30. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  20. "Mr Neil Stratford". Society of Antiquaries of London. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  21. "LA SNAF". snaf (in French). Retrieved 2021-07-03.