I wanted to write something that was irregular from the standard exhibition review, so I headed to the beautiful medieval cathedral in the heart of Exeter to have a look at the other more alternative sites of culture. Its a stunning piece of architecture, before you even begin to analyze the artworks embedded within the building.
The Art of Medieval
Exeter Cathedral is undoubtedly an icon of the city, but one that is frequently only observed from the outside by students. However, I am advocating popping inside this cold December, and taking a look at the beautiful examples of religious art, from the medieval to modern day, which are truly more breathtaking than is possible to describe.
Built around 1170, in its earliest completed form the Cathedral has stood in the city through many ages, and indeed each epoch has left its mark on the building.
The earliest imprint of creative work upon the Cathedral is the medieval miserichords. These are wooden ‘mercy seats’ are designed to provide comfort in periods of long prayer. They also have an aesthetic value, which is more interesting perhaps to the visiting student. These seats are survivors from a time long passed, and are rich in not only religious images but that of medieval folklore and mythology. The carvings are intricate and astounding examples of craftsmanship from the Middle Ages. They are to be found in the stalls at the rear of the choir within the cathedral. The carvings on these seats are amongst the earliest of their kind in England, and certainly the oldest complete set.
To move on from a small detail to something far more grandiose, one must simply life their eyes upwards. The ceiling is an exquisite display of arches and ribs of stone that extend further than the eye can see. A guide to the cathedral describes accurately how ‘the [...] journey is not over yet, that the heart of the building is beyond, at the end of the avenue of tree-like arches over your head’. The roof is a guide down the cathedral, daring you to immerse yourself deeper into the magic of the architectural grace of the building.
The medieval is all around you within the building, from a clock originally powered not by electricity but by the movement of water, to the ‘green men’ who peep out at you from corners of chapels. The clock arrived in Exeter Cathedral around 1484, and features a set of dials in which the earth is at the centre of the supposed universe, with the sun and the moon in orbit (Copernicus was only 10 when the clock was installed, and had some way to go before working out the order of things). It is a beautiful blue colour and a fantastic piece of engineering from an age long ago.
The ‘green men’ are a lot less epic but perhaps more alluring. They are a popular regional feature in churches in the West Country, small carvings of a man’s face emerging from foliage. The religious meaning of these men is no longer relevant, leaving these traces of the medieval nothing but perhaps slightly sinister onlookers on the congregation and visitors to the church. They, like the carvings on the miserichords are a trace from the medieval past, their meanings lost, but the art of them remains. I was shocked to learn that in Exeter Cathedral, far more images of the Green Man exist than images of Jesus Christ, and I challenge any visitor to find them hidden amongst the ornate decorative architecture.
There are much more medieval, and indeed later Art and Architectural masterpieces, from the big to the small to be discovered in Exeter Cathedral, which I cannot begin to list here. From the tombs to the tapestries the traces of history and creativity ooze from the Cathedral. It would be a terrible thing to miss a trip to this remarkable building while living in this medieval city.
