Setting the Scene: European Painted Cloths from the Fourteenth to the Twenty-First Century

The potential for large sizes, portability and versatility for religious objects including banners, hangings, altarpieces and palls was the impetus for the emergence of fabrics as a painting support in Western art in the Middle Ages. The functionality of the works explains the survival of relatively few examples and although painted cloths were the most common form of interior decoration for centuries, they have received less attention from art historians and historians in part due to this poor survival rate. While painted cloths were once commissioned for court functions, part of an elaborate display of royal power and magnificence, the same methods and materials continued to be used for scenic cloths. The papers in this volume explore the use of painted cloths in religious ceremony, pageantry, domestic interiors and scenic art, focusing on their change of context and significance from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century and examining their different function, materials and method of creation

The changing role of English scenic artists

This paper surveys the changing role and status of painters who painted cloth for scenery beginning with painters in the service of King Henry III (1216–1272), commissioned to paint both portraits and pageant banners. It traces the development of the guilds, the King’s Painters and the King’s Serjeant Painters who painted cloths for court events including pageants and masques over a 300-year period. It charts the subsequent move towards specialized scenic artists in the seventeenth century, once the theatre had been established outside the court, and the eventual split between artist and designer in the twentieth century. The research into scenic art, of which this survey forms a part, has begun to establish the scope of comparative documentary material and extant cloths, with the long-term objective of exploring how working in the two different contexts of scenic and fine art influence the practices and creative output of the artist