When we walked round Chelmsford Cathedral the other day, we did not go inside, but today I remembered the painted modern window we had seen a couple of years ago. Painted by Mark Cazalet, which I had put on an old blog. The symbolism can be found in the words below, St Cedd is sitting under his tree, the eldest of four brothers and a Northern saint.
This painting is rather beautiful, formed of five panels. The tree is an oak, on the right hand side we find St.Cede sitting under it in a tranquil scene of golden corn but on the left, the tree is dying and depicts the environmental degradation we subject our land to. Also there is a skeleton on this side, this is Judas Iscariot, 30 pieces of silver falling from his skeletal hand, a reminder that the oil rigs that we see in the picture is the price we are paying for the destruction of the Earth; the painting has several messages, and there is a certain pagan air to it, the great tree so much a symbol of other religions stands tall and magnificent centre stage, highlighted by the gold of the sun, but up above the moon shines, a darkening sky signifying the threat of coming disaster.
Mark Cazelet's "Tree of Life" painting in the North Transept
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| Chelmsford Cathedral |
Reading up on Mark Cazelet, and one finds he is a painter of ecclesiastical paintings and has a very distinctive style, one of his works was a book illustrating Thomas Hardy poems, so a poem by Hardy, who occasionally I love for his very gloomy poems as he walks in the grave yard musing on his relationship with his wife. How did they get on I wonder?
The Walk
You did not walk with me
Of late to the hill-top tree
As in earlier days,
By the gated ways:
You were weak and lame,
So you never came,
And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind.
I walked up there to-day
Just in the former way:
Surveyed around
The familiar ground
By myself again:
What difference, then?
Only that underlying sense
Of the look of a room on returning thence.
What a fabulous window, and imbued with layers and layers of meaning and inference. (Of course, I shall have to check out st Cedd, not having come across him before.)
ReplyDeleteAh, that Hardy poem. I think each resented the other from quite early on in the marriage, for varying reasons, and it doesn't sound like they improved with keeping does it?!
Hi Jennie, written about him elsewhere (the link I have just put up) managed to visit the village of Lastingham in Yorkshire twice, and the very old church set out on the marshes at Bradwell to.
ReplyDeleteWill always love Hardy for his gloominess, but perhaps I should a biography as well.