Charles Boutell and Marion Harry Alexander Spielmann

“ Still later, when more exact face-portraiture had become a recognized element, sculptors must be supposed to have aimed at the production of such resemblance as their art would enable them to give to their works; and accordingly, when we compare effigies with painted portraits of the same personages, we find that they corroborate one another. The prevalence of portraiture in the effigies of the 16th and 17th centuries, when their art generally underwent a palpable decline, by no means raises all works of this class, or indeed the majority of them, to the dignity of true portraits ”

“ Thus, since the monumental effigies of England are second to none in artistic merit, while they have been preserved in far greater numbers, and generally in better condition than those in other countries, they represent in unbroken continuity an unrivalled series of original personal representations of successive generations, very many of them being, in the most significant acceptation of that term, veritable contemporaneous portraits. ”

“ In the original contract for the construction of the monument at Warwick to Richard Beauchamp, the fifth earl, who died in 1439, it is provided that an effigy of the deceased noble should be executed in bronze gilt, with all possible care, by the most skilful and experienced artists of the time; and the details of the armour and the ornaments of the figure are specified with minute precision. It is remarkable, however, that the effigy itself is described only in the general and indefinite terms—“an image of a man armed.” There is no provision that the effigy should be “an image” of the earl ”

“ In judging of these latter effigies, however, we must estimate them by the standard of art of their own era; and, as a general rule, the effigies that are the best as works of art in their own class are the best also and the most faithful in their portraiture. The earlier effigies, usually produced without any express aim at exact portraiture, as we now employ that expression, have nevertheless strong claims upon our veneration. Often their sculpture is very noble ”

“ Except in very rare instances, that most important element, genuine face-portraiture, is not to be looked for, in even the finest sculptured effigies, earlier than about the middle of the 15th century. In works of the highest order of art, indeed, the memorials of personages of the most exalted rank, effigies from an early period in their existence may be considered occasionally to have been portraits properly so called ”

“ This, like the figure of Thomas Owen, is in alabaster, but since its erection has always been described as terra-cotta—a material which came into considerable favour for the purpose of busts and half-lengths towards the end of the 16th century, imported, of course, from abroad. Sometimes the stone monuments were painted to resemble life, as in the monuments to Shakespeare and John Combe (the latter now over-painted white) , in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon. ”