1.
Wenceslaus Hollar
–
Václav Hollar, was a Czech etcher from Kingdom of Bohemia, known in England as Wenceslaus or Wenceslas and in Germany as Wenzel Hollar. He was born in Prague, and died in London, being buried at St Margarets Church, after his family was ruined by the Sack of Prague in the Thirty Years War, the young Hollar, who had been destined for the law, determined to become an artist. In 1627 he was in Frankfurt where he was apprenticed to the renowned engraver Matthäus Merian, in 1630 he lived in Strasbourg, Mainz and Koblenz, where Hollar portrayed the towns, castles, and landscapes of the Middle Rhine Valley. In 1633 he moved to Cologne and it was in 1636 that he attracted the notice of the famous nobleman and art collector Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, then on an embassy to the imperial court of Emperor Ferdinand II. Employed as a draftsman he travelled with Arundel to Vienna and Prague, in Cologne in 1635, Hollar published his first book. In 1637 he returned him to England where he remained in the Earls household for many years. In around 1650, probably at the request of Hendrik van der Borcht, he etched a commemorative print done after a design by Cornelius Schut in Arundels honour and dedicated to his widow, Aletheia. Arundel is seated in melancholy mode on his tomb in front of an obelisk, in 1745, George Vertue paid homage to their association in the vignette he published on page one of his Description of the Works of the Ingenious Delineator and Engraver Wenceslaus Hollar. It featured a bust of Arundel in front of a pyramid, symbolizing immortality, surrounded by illustrated books, during his first year in England he created View of Greenwich, later issued by Peter Stent, the print-seller. Nearly 3 feet long, he received thirty shillings for the plate, afterwards he fixed the price of his work at fourpence an hour, and measured his time by a sand-glass. On July 4,1641 Hollar married a servant of the Countess of Norfolk and her name was Tracy, they had two children. Lord Arundel left England in 1642, and Hollar passed into the service of the Duke of York and he continued to produce works prolifically throughout the English Civil War, but it adversely affected his income. Hollar took his setting, presumably symbolizing longer term values, directly from an engraving published in George Sandys Relation of a Journey begun An, Hollar joined the Royalist Regiment and was captured by parliamentary forces in 1645 during the siege of Basing House. After a short time he managed to escape, in Antwerp in 1646, he again met with the Earl of Arundel. In 1652 he returned to London, and lived for a time with Faithorne the engraver near Temple Bar, during the following years many books were published which he illustrated, Ogilbys Virgil and Homer, Stapyltons Juvenal, and Dugdales Warwickshire, St Pauls and Monasticon. His income fell as booksellers continued to decline his work, during this time he lost his young son, also reputed to have artistic ability, to the plague. He lived eight years after his return, still working for the booksellers and he died in extreme poverty, his last recorded words being a request to the bailiffs that they would not carry away the bed on which he was dying. Hollar is interred in St Margarets Church in Westminster and he was one of the best and most prolific artists of his time
2.
Bruges
–
Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium, in the northwest of the country. The area of the whole city amounts to more than 13,840 hectares, including 1,075 hectares off the coast, the historic city centre is a prominent World Heritage Site of UNESCO. It is oval and about 430 hectares in size, the citys total population is 117,073, of whom around 20,000 live in the city centre. The metropolitan area, including the commuter zone, covers an area of 616 km2 and has a total of 255,844 inhabitants as of 1 January 2008. Along with a few other canal-based northern cities, such as Amsterdam and Stockholm, Bruges has a significant economic importance thanks to its port and was once one of the worlds chief commercial cities. Bruges is well known as the seat of the College of Europe, the name probably derives from the Old Dutch for bridge, brugga. Also compare Middle Dutch brucge, brugge, and modern Dutch bruggehoofd, the form brugghe would be a southern Dutch variant. The Dutch word and the English bridge both derive from Proto-Germanic *brugjō-, Bruges was a location of coastal settlement during prehistory. This Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement is unrelated to medieval city development, in the Bruges area, the first fortifications were built after Julius Caesars conquest of the Menapii in the first century BC, to protect the coastal area against pirates. The Franks took over the region from the Gallo-Romans around the 4th century. The Viking incursions of the century prompted Count Baldwin I of Flanders to reinforce the Roman fortifications, trade soon resumed with England. Bruges received its city charter on 27 July 1128, and new walls and canals were built, in 1089 Bruges became the capital of the County of Flanders. Since about 1050, gradual silting had caused the city to lose its access to the sea. A storm in 1134, however, re-established this access, through the creation of a channel at the Zwin. The new sea arm stretched all the way to Damme, a city became the commercial outpost for Bruges. Bruges had a location at the crossroads of the northern Hanseatic League trade. They developed, or borrowed from Italy, new forms of merchant capitalism, whereby several merchants would share the risks and profits and they employed new forms of economic exchange, including bills of exchange and letters of credit. The city eagerly welcomed foreign traders, most notably the Portuguese traders selling pepper and other spices, the citys entrepreneurs reached out to make economic colonies of England and Scotlands wool-producing districts
3.
Hans Eworth
–
Hans Eworth was a Flemish painter active in England in the mid-16th century. Along with other exiled Flemings, he made a career in Tudor London, painting allegorical images as well as portraits of the gentry, about 40 paintings are now attributed to Eworth, among them portraits of Mary I and Elizabeth I. Eworth also executed commissions for Elizabeths Office of the Revels in the early 1570s. Nothing is known of Eworths early life or training, as Jan Euworts, he is recorded as a freeman of the artists Guild of St Luke in Antwerp in 1540. A Jan and Nicholas Ewouts, painter and mercer were expelled from Antwerp for heresy in 1544, by 1545 Eworth was resident in London, where he is well recorded from 1549. Eworths earliest surviving works date from 1549 to 1550. The original — signed with the HE monogram Eworth consistently used — was donated to the Courtauld Institute of Art by Lord Lee of Farnham in 1932, the painting was in badly damaged condition when it was donated to the Institute, although it has subsequently been conserved and restored. Although there is no evidence that Eworths most important patron was the Catholic queen Mary I. All his known portraits of Mary I appear to be variants of a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London which is signed HE, a second portrait, now in the Society of Antiquaries collection, is also signed and dated 1554. Two other portraits show Mary I in later fashions and are thought to have painted between 1555 and Marys death in 1558. Another is in the collection of Trinity College, Cambridge, over the next decade, Eworth continued to paint portraits of the aristocracy, including paired portraits of the Duke of Norfolk and his second wife and of the Earl and Countess of Moray. Despite the frequent appearance of a characteristic HE monogram, the attribution of works to Eworth—and the identification of his sitters—remains in flux, Eworths last known works date from 1570-3. Like many other artists of the Tudor court, Eworth was also engaged in decorative work, payment records show that Eworth was designing for the Office of the Revels as late as 1573, and he is believed to have died in 1574. The Portrait of Sir John Luttrell, A Tudor Mystery, London, Cooper, Tanya, A Guide to Tudor & Jacobean Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London,2008, ISBN 978-1-85514-393-7 Cooper, Tanya. Hans Eworth, Four case studies of painting methods and techniques, in The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Cust, Lionel, The Painter HE, Second Annual Volume of the Walpole Society 1912-1913, Oxford & London, hearn, Karen, ed. Dynasties, Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630
4.
Anthony van Dyck
–
Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England, after enjoying great success in Italy and Flanders. He also painted biblical and mythological subjects, displayed outstanding facility as a draughtsman, the Van Dyke beard is named after him. Antoon van Dyck was born to parents in Antwerp. By the age of fifteen he was already an accomplished artist, as his Self-portrait, 1613–14. He was admitted to the Antwerp painters Guild of Saint Luke as a master by February 1618. His influence on the young artist was immense, Rubens referred to the nineteen-year-old van Dyck as the best of my pupils. At the same time the dominance of Rubens in the small and declining city of Antwerp probably explains why, despite his periodic returns to the city, van Dyck spent most of his career abroad. In 1620, at the instigation of George Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham, van Dyck went to England for the first time where he worked for King James I of England, receiving £100. After about four months he returned to Flanders, but moved on in late 1621 to Italy and he was already presenting himself as a figure of consequence, annoying the rather bohemian Northern artists colony in Rome, says Giovan Pietro Bellori, by appearing with the pomp of Zeuxis. He was mostly based in Genoa, although he travelled extensively to other cities. In 1627, he went back to Antwerp where he remained for five years, a life-size group portrait of twenty-four City Councillors of Brussels he painted for the council-chamber was destroyed in 1695. He was evidently very charming to his patrons, and, like Rubens, well able to mix in aristocratic and court circles, by 1630 he was described as the court painter of the Habsburg Governor of Flanders, the Archduchess Isabella. In this period he produced many religious works, including large altarpieces. King Charles I was the most passionate and generous collector of art among the British monarchs, and saw art as a way of promoting his elevated view of the monarchy. In 1628, he bought the collection that the Gonzagas of Mantua were forced to dispose of. In 1626, he was able to persuade Orazio Gentileschi to settle in England, later to be joined by his daughter Artemisia and some of his sons. Rubens was a target, who eventually came on a diplomatic mission, which included painting, in 1630. He was very well-treated during his visit, during which he was knighted
5.
Painting
–
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
6.
Elizabeth I of England
–
Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed two and a half years after Elizabeths birth. Annes marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate, edwards will was set aside and Mary became queen, deposing Lady Jane Grey. During Marys reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels, in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers, led by William Cecil, one of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the Supreme Governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England and it was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir to continue the Tudor line. She never did, despite numerous courtships, as she grew older, Elizabeth became famous for her virginity. A cult grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, in government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and half-siblings had been. One of her mottoes was video et taceo, in religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the powers of France and Spain. She only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France, by the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain. Englands defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 associated Elizabeth with one of the greatest military victories in English history, Elizabeths reign is known as the Elizabethan era. Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity. Such was the case with Elizabeths rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, after the short reigns of Elizabeths half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity. Elizabeth was born at Greenwich Palace and was named after both her grandmothers, Elizabeth of York and Elizabeth Howard and she was the second child of Henry VIII of England born in wedlock to survive infancy. Her mother was Henrys second wife, Anne Boleyn, at birth, Elizabeth was the heir presumptive to the throne of England. She was baptised on 10 September, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the Marquess of Exeter, the Duchess of Norfolk, Elizabeth was two years and eight months old when her mother was beheaded on 19 May 1536, four months after Catherine of Aragons death from natural causes. Elizabeth was declared illegitimate and deprived of her place in the royal succession, eleven days after Anne Boleyns execution, Henry married Jane Seymour, who died shortly after the birth of their son, Prince Edward, in 1537
7.
Henry Lee of Ditchley
–
Sir Henry Lee KG, of Ditchley, was Queens Champion and Master of the Armouries under Queen Elizabeth I of England. Margaret Wyatt was a sister of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, Lee had three younger brothers, Robert Lee, Thomas Lee, and Cromwell Lee, who compiled an Italian-English dictionary. Lee also had an illegitimate half-brother, Sir Richard Lee, Lee became Queen Elizabeth I’s champion in 1570 and was appointed Master of the Armoury in 1580, an office which he held until his death. As Queens Champion, Lee devised the Accession Day tilts held annually on 17 November and he retired as Queens Champion in 1590, and the poems His Golden Locks by George Peele and Times Eldest Son were set to music by John Dowland and performed at the lavish retirement pageant. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Garter in 1597 and he was a Member of the Parliament of England for Buckinghamshire in 1558,1559,1571 and 1572. Sir Henry, like most courtiers of the day, had a portrait painted by a leading artist, in Lees picture, his sleeves are decorated with armillary spheres, a symbol of wisdom and also his device as queens champion. His sleeves are decorated with lovers knots which, combined with the armillary spheres can be seen to represent his love for learning. Lee also wears several rings tied to his arm, and has his finger through a ring around his neck. This may represent his marriages, and the ring, which is not quite on his finger. Lees wife, Anne, was buried at Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, there is a monument to her in St. Mary the Virgin, Aylesbury. After her death, Lee lived openly with his mistress, Anne Vavasour, Lee built up an estate at Ditchley in Oxfordshire, from 1583. He was later noted for refusing to receive his monarch a second time, three suits of armour were made for Sir Henry Lee by the renowned Greenwich armoury, and are depicted in the album of drawings left behind by that workshop. Portions of the armour survive to the present day, one of the armours currently stands in the hall of the Armourers and Brasiers company in London. His heir and cousin, also Sir Henry Lee, became 1st baronet of Quarendon and he died on 12 February 1611. A descendant of Henry Lee of Ditchley was Edward Lee, 1st Earl of Lichfield, ancestor of Mary Custis Lee, the Dormant and Extinct Baronage of England. Sir Henry Lee, An Elizabethan Portrait, jack, Sybil M. Paget, William, first Baron Paget. Everingham, Kimball G. ed. Magna Carta Ancestry, A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, Sir Henry Lee Accessed July 26,2008 The Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers
8.
James VI and I
–
James VI and I was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until his death. The kingdoms of Scotland and England were individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciary, and laws, though both were ruled by James in personal union. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, James succeeded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother Mary was compelled to abdicate in his favour. Four different regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, in 1603, he succeeded the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, who died without issue. He continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known after him as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625 at the age of 58. After the Union of the Crowns, he based himself in England from 1603, only returning to Scotland once in 1617 and he was a major advocate of a single parliament for England and Scotland. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and British colonization of the Americas began, at 57 years and 246 days, Jamess reign in Scotland was longer than those of any of his predecessors. He achieved most of his aims in Scotland but faced difficulties in England, including the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. James himself was a scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie, The True Law of Free Monarchies. He sponsored the translation of the Bible that would later be named after him, Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed the wisest fool in Christendom, an epithet associated with his character ever since. Since the latter half of the 20th century, historians have tended to revise Jamess reputation and treat him as a serious, James was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Both Mary and Darnley were great-grandchildren of Henry VII of England through Margaret Tudor, Marys rule over Scotland was insecure, and she and her husband, being Roman Catholics, faced a rebellion by Protestant noblemen. James was born on 19 June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, and as the eldest son and heir apparent of the monarch automatically became Duke of Rothesay and Prince and he was baptised Charles James or James Charles on 17 December 1566 in a Catholic ceremony held at Stirling Castle. His godparents were Charles IX of France, Elizabeth I of England, Mary refused to let the Archbishop of St Andrews, whom she referred to as a pocky priest, spit in the childs mouth, as was then the custom. The subsequent entertainment, devised by Frenchman Bastian Pagez, featured men dressed as satyrs and sporting tails, Jamess father, Darnley, was murdered on 10 February 1567 at Kirk o Field, Edinburgh, perhaps in revenge for Rizzios death. James inherited his fathers titles of Duke of Albany and Earl of Ross, Mary was already unpopular, and her marriage on 15 May 1567 to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was widely suspected of murdering Darnley, heightened widespread bad feeling towards her. In June 1567, Protestant rebels arrested Mary and imprisoned her in Loch Leven Castle and she was forced to abdicate on 24 July 1567 in favour of the infant James and to appoint her illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as regent. The care of James was entrusted to the Earl and Countess of Mar, to be conserved, nursed, and upbrought in the security of Stirling Castle
9.
Printmaking
–
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints that have an element of originality, except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Each print produced is not considered a copy but rather is considered an original, a print may be known as an impression. Printmaking is not chosen only for its ability to multiple impressions. Prints are created by transferring ink from a matrix or through a screen to a sheet of paper or other material. Screens made of silk or synthetic fabrics are used for the screenprinting process, other types of matrix substrates and related processes are discussed below. Multiple impressions printed from the matrix form an edition. Prints may also be printed in book form, such as illustrated books or artists books, Printmaking techniques are generally divided into the following basic categories, Relief, where ink is applied to the original surface of the matrix. Relief techniques include woodcut or woodblock as the Asian forms are known, wood engraving. Intaglio, where ink is applied beneath the surface of the matrix. Intaglio techniques include engraving, etching, mezzotint, aquatint, planographic, where the matrix retains its original surface, but is specially prepared and/or inked to allow for the transfer of the image. Planographic techniques include lithography, monotyping, and digital techniques, stencil, where ink or paint is pressed through a prepared screen, including screenprinting and pochoir. Other types of printmaking techniques outside these groups include collagraphy and viscosity printing, collagraphy is a printmaking technique in which textured material is adhered to the printing matrix. This texture is transferred to the paper during the printing process, Contemporary printmaking may include digital printing, photographic mediums, or a combination of digital, photographic, and traditional processes. Many of these techniques can also be combined, especially within the same family, for example, Rembrandts prints are usually referred to as etchings for convenience, but very often include work in engraving and drypoint as well, and sometimes have no etching at all. Woodcut, a type of print, is the earliest printmaking technique. It was probably first developed as a means of printing patterns on cloth, woodcuts of images on paper developed around 1400 in Japan, and slightly later in Europe. These are the two areas where woodcut has been most extensively used purely as a process for making images without text, the artist draws a design on a plank of wood, or on paper which is transferred to the wood
10.
Protestantism
–
Protestantism is a form of Christianity which originated with the Reformation, a movement against what its followers considered to be errors in the Roman Catholic Church. It is one of the three divisions of Christendom, together with Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The term derives from the letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical. Although there were earlier breaks from or attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church—notably by Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, Protestants reject the notion of papal supremacy and deny the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, but disagree among themselves regarding the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Five solae summarize the reformers basic differences in theological beliefs, in the 16th century, Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Baltic states, and Iceland. Reformed churches were founded in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland and France by such reformers as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, the political separation of the Church of England from Rome under King Henry VIII brought England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement. Protestants developed their own culture, which made major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts, some Protestant denominations do have a worldwide scope and distribution of membership, while others are confined to a single country. A majority of Protestants are members of a handful of families, Adventism, Anglicanism, Baptist churches, Reformed churches, Lutheranism, Methodism. Nondenominational, evangelical, charismatic, independent and other churches are on the rise, and constitute a significant part of Protestant Christianity. Six princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, the edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier. During the Reformation, the term was used outside of the German politics. The word evangelical, which refers to the gospel, was more widely used for those involved in the religious movement. Nowadays, this word is still preferred among some of the historical Protestant denominations in the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions in Europe, above all the term is used by Protestant bodies in the German-speaking area, such as the EKD. In continental Europe, an Evangelical is either a Lutheran or a Calvinist, the German word evangelisch means Protestant, and is different from the German evangelikal, which refers to churches shaped by Evangelicalism. The English word evangelical usually refers to Evangelical Protestant churches, and it traces its roots back to the Puritans in England, where Evangelicalism originated, and then was brought to the United States. Protestantism as a term is now used in contradistinction to the other major Christian traditions, i. e. Roman Catholicism. Initially, Protestant became a term to mean any adherent to the Reformation movement in Germany and was taken up by Lutherans. Even though Martin Luther himself insisted on Christian or Evangelical as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed Christ, French and Swiss Protestants preferred the word reformed, which became a popular, neutral and alternative name for Calvinists
11.
St Mary Abchurch
–
St Mary Abchurch is a Church of England church off Cannon Street in the City of London. Dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, it is first mentioned in 1198–1199, the medieval church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, and replaced by the present building. The church dates back to the century and is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The additional name Abchurch may be a variant of Upchurch, referring to its position on high ground. After the Reformation, Archbishop Parker persuaded Elizabeth I to grant the church to his college, Corpus Christi, Cambridge, restored and beautified in 1611 at the cost of the parishioners, St Marys was destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666. The church was rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren in 1681–1686, the parish was united with that of the nearby church of St Laurence Pontney, also destroyed in the Great Fire but not rebuilt. A bomb hit the church in September 1940 during the London Blitz, the greatest damage was to the dome. W. Godfrey Allen repaired the church between 1948–1953, the dome was restored by E. W. Tristan, and work on it was completed after his death in 1952 by the artist Walter Hoyle. Many sources describe the reredos as having been shattered into pieces by the bombing. In fact it was removed from the church by order of the church wardens, the church was designated a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950. The church has a red brick exterior with stone dressings, there is a four-storey, 51-foot-high tower with a leaded spire. The ceiling of the church takes the form of a dome and it springs from four plain brick walls, has no external thrusts and measures more than forty feet across. It was painted with the present decorative scheme in 1708, when the church went under repair. Painted in oils directly on the plaster, the decorations are divided in two horizontally by a painted Trompe-lœil cornice, above this a choir of angels and cherubs in adoration surrounds a golden glow, in the centre of which it the name of God in Hebrew characters. Below it are eight seated female figures painted in monochrome in imitation of sculpture, the painting was restored once in the 18th century and twice in the 19th. The pulpit is by William Grey, and the door cases and its grand altar-piece is by Grinling Gibbons. Gibbons original bill for what he called the Olter Pees was rediscovered in the Guildhall Library in 1946, also to be seen there are original high box pews on three sides of the church. The church was without an organ until 1822, when public subscription allowed one to be built by J. C. Bishop
_by_Marcus_Gheeraerts_the_Younger.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Media related to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger at Wikimedia Commons
