MEDIEVAL WALL PAINTINGS

Medieval churches in England were more or less completely painted - the walls, the windowsills, the woodwork, the monuments. Artists set to work on the plastered walls painting saints, bible stories, allegories, dooms, crucifixions and even imitation masonry. Except for the last, the object was not decoration but religious and moral education. In an illiterate age, wall painting graphically reinforced the message of the scriptures and today they have been called 'The Poor Man's Bible'. Today a painted church is a rarity and few have much of their original decoration left. Their fascinating story is here told through pictures that remain in a revised and expanded colour version of the original 'Discovering Wall Paintings'. At the end, a county by county gazetteer lists churches where wall paintings can still be seen as well as those with extensive or high artistic merit. 80 page paperback.