Software could reconstruct medieval mosaics
Project to conserve Coventry
By Robert Bevan. Conservation, Issue 237, July-August 2012
Published online: 05 July 2012
Experimental software developed to reassemble Cold War
documents may soon shed light on the mysteries surrounding around 5,000
medieval stained-glass fragments from Coventry Cathedral, as well as on the
work of John Thornton, one of England
The glass was removed from the cathedral before German air
raids left the building a shattered ruin during the Second World War. The
majority of the pieces have remained disassembled ever since, and have been
stored in poor conditions next to the building’s boiler.
The chief executive of the World Monuments Fund, Jonathan
Foyle, says that, to a medievalist, “it is like rediscovering [a painting from]
Picasso’s blue period in fragments in a basement. It is a magnificent puzzle.”
The full history of the glass is not clear, but the
fragments were mosaics, rather than complete windows, installed in the
clerestory in the 19th century following earlier reorderings of the church.
Although some choice panels have been extracted, many of
the fragments remain unexamined, having been catalogued eccentrically by colour
and image. The categories include portraits of merchants and their wives,
beasts and angels, architectural visions and calligraphy. Foyle describes them
as a “medieval encyclopaedia”.
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