page_title: Nottingham alabaster
section_title: Forms
hierarchical_section_title: Nottingham alabaster / Forms
caption_attribution_description: (St Mary and St Barlok)Monument to Sir w:Ralph Fitzherbert,d.1483,and his wife:detail of tomb-chest. Three children are shown here Richard, Thomas and John - another four are to the right
context_page_description: Nottingham alabaster is a term used to refer to the English sculpture industry, mostly of relatively small religious carvings, which flourished from the fourteenth century until the early sixteenth century. Alabaster carvers were at work in London, York and Burton-on-Trent, and many probably worked very close to the rural mines, but the largest concentration was around Nottingham. This has led to all the English medieval output being referred to as "Nottingham alabaster".
  Alabaster is a mineral composed of gypsum and various impurities, is much softer and easier to work than marble and a good material for mass production, though not suitable for outdoors use. Carvings were made as single figures, assemblies for tomb monuments, including full length effigies, but the most common survivals are panels, up to about 20 inches or 50 cm high, from sets for altarpieces, which could be transported relatively easily, and fitted into a locally-made architectural surround of stone or wood on arrival at their destination. These were attractive for less wealthy churches, and for the private chapels of the nobility.
context_section_description: The sculpture industry evolved to produce two main forms, panels and statues.  Thin panels carved in high relief, typically about 40 cm by 25 cm in size, usually come from series covering the Passion or Life of Christ which were mounted in a wooden framework as altarpieces, or used by the wealthy as domestic devotional works, set in a wooden triptych with closeable doors.  The 15th-century Nailloux Altarpiece in south-western France is an example of a five-panel set that remains in situ.
  Many statues were smaller than this, but there are a number of larger ones.   An example of a much larger statue, three feet high and free-standing but flat-backed, is Our Lady of Westminster, now in London but found by the art trade in France.  The discovery in 1863 of a headless but stylistically almost identical alabaster image, buried in the churchyard of All Saints, Broughton, Craven, suggests that, as was apparently usually the case, the statue was a standard model repeated several times by the workshop, and probably produced for stock rather than upon receipt of a particular commission.  Exports, as of the better documented contemporary export trade in icons of the Cretan school, were usually made in bulk for sale to dealers, who then found buyers locally.
  Most surviving examples have lost much of their paintwork, but the colouring of the carvings was an integral part of the production. Colouring was usually very vivid, with robes being painted in scarlets and blues, hair and accoutrements such as crowns and sceptres were often gilded, and landscapes were decorated with distinctive daisy patterns often against a dark-green ground. Moulded and gilded gesso was also used to give extra richness to the carvings which would need to be brightly coloured, as mostly they would only be seen at a distance by candlelight.
  The subjects of the sculptors were the usual content of altarpieces, most often scenes from the Life of Christ or Life of the Virgin.  There is a subject apparently unique to English alabasters, the Bosom of Abraham Trinity, a variant of the Throne of Mercy which is more often found, and with the Madonna and Child, is often a larger free-standing statue – such as the Westminster example.  Other subjects include saint's lives, including Thomas Becket and, exceptionally, the V&A has a fine detached head of John the Baptist, the subject of a popular devotional cult from the second half of the 15th century right up to the Reformation, which involved fasting on Wednesdays to obtain specific graces.
caption: detail of the tomb of Sir Ralph Fitzherbert, d. 1483, showing some of his children.
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