Incorporated internally into east wall of chancel

First recorded in Malcolm 1793; formerly placed over south door, outside, and partly obscured by south porch; removed to north wall of nave following 1899 restoration

Stepney, St Dunstan

Complete; slightly worn

The panel is rectangular and delimited by a frame consisting of a broad decorated zone flanked by narrow, plain, relief mouldings of square section. The decoration consists of a repeated pattern of five-lobed leaves. The leaves are hollowed, and each is enclosed within a dished ovoid cut off by the inner and outer edge mouldings. The ovoids are separated by mouldings of indeterminate section with median-incised lines.

The panel is decorated in relief with a crucifixion scene. The moulded ends of the cross-arms and foot terminate on the inner edge of the frame. The cross bears a heavily-weathered, nimbed figure of Christ with the arms sloping up from the shoulders and the head inclined to the figure's right. He wears a loin-cloth, longer to the rear than at the front, and the bare legs are bent to the figure's right. The feet are out-turned. Two inward-facing figures flank the cross, standing on the lower frame. To the left is the robed and nimbed figure of the Virgin, her left hand is raised towards her face, and her right hand held across the breast. She is clad in an ankle length undergarment, with an overgarment falling in a V-shaped fold to knee level, and gathered up over the arms. To the right the robed and nimbed figure of St John rests his head on his right hand, his left arm crosses the body to support the right elbow. He wears an ankle-length undergarment, and a overgarment thrown over his left arm. On either side of the head of the cross is a heavily-weathered roundel, touching the horizontal but not the vertical limb. Each contains a robed bust representing, to the left, the sun, and to the right, the moon.

This cover is clearly related to the large-scale crucifixion groups which survive both in situ and ex situ in south-east England. In particular, the group at Breamore 1 also includes roundels personifying the Sun and Moon, although placed at the ends of the lateral arms of the cross (Ill. 425), not above them, as here. This link suggests that the present piece should be dated to the late tenth or first half of the eleventh century, the period when, on architectural grounds, these groups were used. This dating is narrowed by comparison with manuscript depictions of the crucifixion. For example, in the Winchcombe Psalter, dated to c. 1030–50 (Temple 1976, no. 80), and BL MS Arundel 60, dated to c. 1060 (Temple 1976, no. 103, ill. 312), the personifications of the Sun and Moon are treated in exactly the same way as here, with the face and hands of the half-length figure veiled. Analysis of the leaf decoration of the borders also points to an eleventh-century date for the piece. The closest parallel to the leaf forms on the present panel is provided by the borders on fol. 23r of Rheims, Bibl. Mun. MS 9, dated to c. 1062 (ibid., no. 105, ill. 299). The borders of the present piece are, if anything, further conventionalised in a manner commonplace in Romanesque art, as in the frames of the Chichester panels (Zarnecki 1951b, pl. 80) (Fig. 22a).

Eleventh century

Malcolm 1793, 714, fig. 5; Lysons 1792 - 6, 432 - 3; King 1851, 80 - 1, pl. VI; Lethaby 1902, 173; Pepys and Goodman 1905, 14, 36, fig. p. 19, pl. 8; Dalton 1908, 225 - 31, pl. facing 226; Prior and Gardner 1912, 137, 140, 143, fig. 118; Longhurst 1926, 7 - 8; ( --- ) 1930, 69, 71, pl. 125; Clapham 1930, 130, 138 - 9, pl. 62; Cottrill 1931, 51, 52, appendix; Casson 1933, 26, 35, pl. IA; Rice 1947, 12; Kendrick 1949, 47 - 8, 83, pl. XL.2; Gardner 1951, 46, pl. 72; Green and Green 1951, 53; Rice 1952, 101, 111, pl. 9a; Zarnecki 1953, 106; Rice 1960, 200, pl. IIIC; Coatsworth 1979, i, 281, 293 - 6, ii, 47 - 8, pl. 150; Rodwell and Rouse 1984, 318; Tweddle 1986b, i, 75 - 6, 209 - 11, ii, 420 - 2, iii, figs. 29, 33, pl. 65a