MEDIAEVAL PAINTING rich fur-trimmed robe and peculiar headdress, who proffers a posy of flowers to the male skeleton. Above and between the figures are scrolls with the inscription in rhymed lines, Natus homo muliere brevi tempore parvo. Nunc est^ nunc fjon est, quasi Jios crescit in arvo. The second picture represents the interior of a church. In the foreground is a tomb from which rises a corpse. The shroud fastened over its head hangs loosely about it. The right hand points to a font in the background, over which on a scroll are the words De utere. Upon another scroll proceeding from the mouth of the figure is inscribed ^wj^-OT quasi non essem, and yet another, held in its left hand, bears part of a sentence, translatus ad tumulum job lo, the various inscriptions making up the nineteenth verse of the tenth chapter of Job. The two compositions have been called part of a ' Dance of Death,' but they do not resemble in any way those of the Danse Macabre. They were meant doubtless to enforce the teaching so common in the middle ages of the vanity of all earthly things, and of the all-conquering and resistless power of death. No other example of this class has been found, it is believed, on the screen panels of Norfolk churches, but the same moral was enforced by the late fourteenth-century wall paintings of the Church of Wickhampton, where the legend of ' Les Trois Vifs et les trois Morts ' was represented. It was found again upon the walls of the Church of Belton, which, though in Suffolk, is close to the Norfolk border. The prevalence of this setting forth of man's mortality may be seen in many monuments of noted families in English churches, where, beneath the effigy arrayed as in life, the shrouded figure of the personage above lies extended in the tomb. Subjects as distinguished from single figures are, if anything, indicative of work of the sixteenth century, and the paintings mentioned at Tacolneston, perhaps, and those at Loddon certainly, are of especial interest on this account. The screen paintings at Loddon, though battered, partly scrubbed out, and in some cases perhaps only partly finished, show, in the realistic treatment of the groups of figures and in the backgrounds, a great advance upon the single figures on purely conventional grounds. Such of the subjects as can be made out portray the martyrdom of St. William of Norwich (Plate vii.), the Annun- ciation, the Presentation in the Temple, the Circumcision, the Adoration of the Three Kings, and the Ascension. Figures, too, of this century painted on vellum or on paper and glued over older work are to be found, notably on some panels of the Cawston screen and on that at Gateley. They are superior from an artistic point of view to the paintings they have superseded. Some, perhaps many, screens have received only a purely decorative treatment, the panels being covered by patterns ranging from a simple sprinkling of golden flowers on coloured grounds to elaborate diapers copying the fine woven tissues of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ^ brought from the Low Countries. Into this branch of decorative work it is impossible to enter from lack of space, but the division which comprises the painted roofs cannot be completely passed over, the colouring of the elaborate roofs of the Norfolk churches requiring at least a passing mention. Omitting any description of the font covers, the pulpits, occasionally adorned with painted figures, and other furniture of the churches in the county, all more or less painted and gilt, we can deal here only with the roof paintings. These fall 1 A fine example of this purely decorative treatment may be seen on the screen at Great Massingham. 547
