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Object type: Figural panel
Measurements: H. 70 cm (27.5 in) W. 46 cm (18 in) D. Built in
Stone type: Light red (2.5YR 6/6) to reddish yellow (5YR 6/6), coarse-grained quartzose sandstone, with very poorly sorted, subangular quartz grains up to 1.5mm diameter predominating, but with appreciable quantities of rotten potash feldspar often with trace coatings of hematite. Millstone Grit, possibly the reddened Plompton Grit from the banks of the river Nidd near Knaresborough. [1]
Plate numbers in printed volume: Ills. 17–18
Corpus volume reference: Vol 5 p. 101-102
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A (broad): Small slab or panel, without frame or edge moulding. It stands out a few centimetres ('c. 5 cm', Rodwell 1990, 165) from the rubble wall face, presumably to be flush with or slightly proud of an original plastered surface. Its upper corners are distinctly rounded: its lower end fits closely onto the keystone of the stripwork outlining the arch (which is similarly of gritstone) and may have been cut in a curve to do so. All superficial decoration (if any formerly existed) has been trimmed or scraped off leaving prominent rough tooling marks. Rodwell reports from close examination that 'the sculpture is as complete as it was intended to be... nothing has been hacked away' (Rodwell 1990, 165). All that survives is an egg-shaped head with pointed chin (?i.e. bearded), that is defined by a deep incision and therefore appears recessed in low relief into the stone's surface. The head is placed centrally against the upper edge of the slab; it is frontal and upright; and eyes (set high in the head), a rectangular nose and a straight mouth can all be clearly distinguished.
Since the panel is in situ, its date is given by the architectural and archaeological evidence for the date of the turriform nave above whose chancel arch it is located. That is said to be late tenth-century in construction and was superseded in function by the eastward elaboration of the church in the later eleventh century (Rodwell and Rodwell 1982). Gem's more specific proposal that it was actually a church constructed by Bishop Æthelwold following 971 gives both a closer date and function (Gem 1991, 827–8).
This panel has commonly been thought likely to have carried a Crucifixion scene, with the figure and any ancillary details completed in low relief sculpture, in stucco or painted (Micklethwaite 1896, 334–5; Coatsworth 1979, II, 8; id. 1988, 173, 188). The principal support for this interpretation lies in the certain occurrence of later pre-Conquest monumental roods in the position of the Barton panel above the chancel arch, as at Bibury and Bitton in Gloucestershire, and probably in original design at Breamore, Hampshire, and Langford, Oxfordshire (Coatsworth 1988; Tweddle et al. 1995). It is clear, nevertheless, that for a Crucifixion scene to be accommodated to the proportions of the Barton panel would entail the head being disproportionately large, though not greatly so. Such an emphasis on the head is implicit in its distinctive sculpted rendition. It would not be out of place among Northumbrian Crucifixion sculpture of the period (e.g. Collingwood 1927, 99–105), and this may be the circumstance, too, with the carved head built into the west face of the west tower at Marton (no. 8). This shares with Barton not only the sculptural emphasis on the head, but the rounded wedge shape of the head and the stylised incised features. Latterly Rodwell has suggested the attractive alternative that the scene was a Christ in Majesty, on the grounds that the stone's proportions would better accommodate that iconography (Rodwell and Rodwell 1982, 295, 314 fn. 31; Rodwell 1990, 165–6, pls. 8–10). Even this, in his reconstruction of a naturalistically proportioned figure, overspills the panel onto the nearly flush surface of the stripwork voussoir below, in a manner that may itself be thought an unsatisfactory hypothesis. Rodwell cites as a parallel the stone (Lincoln St Peter 1) set in the west face of the west tower of St Peter-at-Gowts.
This piece may indeed have been interpreted as a Majesty, but it is not a directly relevant parallel in its location in the fabric and is a reused Roman sculpture (see catalogue entry, and Stocker with Everson 1990, 94–5, ill. 27; Stocker 1997a; id. 1998). More relevant would be an alternative interpretation of the Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, angels as supporters of a sculptural Majesty over the chancel arch there rather than a Crucifixion: but it is made improbable by the attitude of those angels. The best analogy may be the late pre-Conquest survival at Nether Wallop, Hampshire, of a painted Majesty over the chancel arch (Gem and Tudor-Craig 1981). If correctly interpreted, it is part of a tradition, well-evidenced in later medieval wall-painting, which plays on the idea of the chancel arch as being the porta coeli. Raw (1990, 48) notes the appropriateness of a Christ in Majesty in this position, which lies in the distinctively Anglo-Saxon association between the high altar and the representation of Christ in Majesty that underlines its symbolic relationship to the resurrection and the life of the next world. Nevertheless, Tudor-Craig's recent doubts (1990b) about the interpretation of the Nether Wallop painting as a Majesty, advancing arguments rather for an Ascension with a zone of scenes above, may remove even this parallel in an architectural context. While the more prolific manuscript evidence certainly shows Majesties common as a motif in painting at least from the end of the tenth and certainly in the eleventh century (Temple 1976, ills. 32, 84, 144, 150, 212, 232, 241, 244, 253, 301, 302), it remains doubtful whether the typical painted setting within a mandorla and commonly supported by angels could be accommodated to the Barton panel any more readily than a Crucifixion.
The alternatives of a Crucifixion or Passion and a Majesty may be thought to represent alternative English and continental traditions (Parsons 1989, 8–10). Given the lack of detail except the head, a further (though less plausible) alternative may be that the figure was a St Peter, the church's patron. Such a panel at St Peter's church, Bromyard, Herefordshire, perhaps of the last decade of the eleventh century (Gethyn-Jones 1979, 53–4, 71, pl. 4a), is now reset over the later Romanesque main south entrance doorway. It was perhaps always intended for that position, since it is a more appropriate subject for that location than over the chancel arch, both intrinsically and as dedicatee of the church. A number of Romanesque tympana incorporate figures of bishops or saints that may plausibly be understood as the church's patron saint, including South Ferriby and Haltham in Lindsey.
