In the display area at the west end of the nave

This fragment was described as in the floor of the chancel in 1870, when only face B was visible (Fowler 1870, 223). However, it was drawn as if free-standing, but with only the same face figured, by Whitaker (1816, I, pl. facing 299), who clearly associated it with the stones founds in 1766–7 (see Dewsbury (minster, All Saints) 1–3 above), but depicted the fragment without comment along with Dewsbury (minster, All Saints) 3 and also a much later medieval stone.

All Saints

Worn, but considerable detail remains on all carved faces.

This is a fragment of a squared, gently tapering shaft. It is unclear which is the main face of this shaft, or indeed whether one was broader than the other. If the panel with the seated Virgin had a single arch, however, that face (A) would be narrower than B; but a double arch is possible, if other figures were included in this scene. The angle between the faces has a very elegant and elaborate cable moulding imitating textile or filigree work, in which narrow vertical threads or wires are bunched and bound by a fine double strand, wound around it S-wise.

A: This face has the cable moulding on the right edge. There are the remains of three panels.

(i) Only a small fragment survives. There is a stepped base on the right upon which stands a column which was decorated in some way. Within the panel are the edge of some drapery and perhaps the foot of a figure. There are the remains of a flat horizontal border beneath this panel.

(ii) On the right is the column of an arch standing on a worn but clearly stepped base. The column ends in a capital like a triple plant binding and there is a bud-like plant form in the spandrel. The arch itself is plain and deeply undercut, and the curve if correctly centred implies an arch little wider than the surviving figure. Beneath is the seated figure of the Virgin with the Christ Child on her lap. She turns slightly to her left. Her halo has a narrow rolled border. Her head is veiled, with the veil wrapping beneath her chin, and with hair showing at the front. Her eyebrows are arched and her eyes deeply drilled, but other features are now lacking. Her right arm is placed across her body to hold the Child, her left arm is not visible. The Child, who is robed and looks like a small adult, sits on her left knee. He has a three-quarter pose but his face is turned to the viewer. The nimbus behind his head is a detail which has sometimes been taken to be the remains of a round-backed chair. There is a scroll resting on the Child's knees and ending just below his chin. His arms are no longer clear but presumably it is the Child who is holding the scroll. The Virgin's feet seem to rest on the lower border of the panel.

(iii) There was clearly a third panel below but only traces of carving in its top right corner survive.

B:The face to the right of A was also panelled. (i) The upper panel has carved detail worn rather smooth. It has been taken to be the feet of two standing figures but this is not certain. (ii) Below is a panel which seems to be complete in width: only the moulding is missing from the right edge. It has an elaborately interlaced medallion scroll, of which two medallions survive, from which sprout both pointed and serrated leaves, and single or paired round buds.

The style of carving and some of the detail are very similar to Dewsbury 1–3. This could therefore, as Collingwood believed (see id. 1927, fig. 13), be part of a square shaft supported by the column represented by Dewsbury 1–3, but this is doubtful as the cable moulding here appears different from that on Dewsbury 2 (Ill. 195).

It is possible in view of the proportion of the panel, as well as from the pose, that the Virgin and Child scene on Dewsbury 4 could have been accompanied by the Magi, and therefore have formed part of an Adoration scene. However, it is not certain that there were other figures on the left, and if so, what they would have been. The iconography of the Virgin and Child, alone or accompanied by the Magi, had produced several variants by the fifth century. A fresco in the catacombs of Priscilla in Rome dating to the early third century is sometimes claimed as the earliest depiction of the Mother of God: this shows her as a nursing mother. This image is said to be a depiction of the fulfilment of the prophet Balaam (Numbers 24, 17), interpreted from antiquity as prophesying the birth of the Messiah (Schiller 1971, 13). The same catacombs holds possibly the earliest depiction of the Adoration of the Magi, an early fourth-century fresco, in which a half-profile Mary seated on a chair holds the Child seated on her left knee with both hands. The basics of the Dewsbury image therefore have a venerable ancestry. The fresco is the forerunner of numerous portrayals in succeeding centuries. In some, Mother and Child are shown in strict profile, as on some fourth- and fifth -century sarcophagi (Schiller 1971, pls. 247, 255), but as often, perhaps even more often, on examples from the fourth to the ninth centuries, Mary is in three-quarter view (ibid., pls. 246, 249, 253, 260–3). A variation, which appears to have developed in the fifth century, shows the Child with his hand raised in blessing, emphasising his divinity, as in an ivory relief from Ravenna or north Italy (Schiller 1971, pl. 423). Mary in these scenes is not the dominant figure, she is portrayed as the throne of the Son of God.

Another development of the fifth century is a more hieratic type in which Mary and the Child are brought to the centre of the scene and Mary's importance is enhanced. Schiller suggested this version presupposes an independent image of the Mother of God, enthroned with the Child, sometimes attended by angels, to which Magi were added subsequently, as was apparently actually the case in an early sixth-century mosaic at Sant'Apollinare, Ravenna (ibid., pl. 257). In this centralised image, the Child not only blesses but holds a scroll in his left hand, emphasising his role as the Divine Logos (Clayton 1990, 143). The chair of the Virgin is made more throne-like, and an architectural setting was frequently added. Carolingian artists used these ancient models, but often incorporated some of the features of the frontal central figure even in scenes in which the Virgin still sits to one side to receive the Magi: for example Mary sits in front of a classically-inspired house, or is framed in an architectural setting, with which her throne is sometimes combined. In these scenes, even of the Adoration of the Magi, the Child is shown blessing and holding a scroll (Schiller 1971, pls. 264–7).

The panel from Dewsbury with the Virgin and Child is one of only a small number with this theme in Anglo-Saxon sculpture, all early and all from Northumbria, and it shares features with all of them and also with the very few other surviving depictions in Insular art in other media. However, two other early examples show a strikingly similar disposition of the Virgin and Child, and both are without the Magi. In these scenes the Mother and Child are facing each other in what Kitzinger (1956, 248–64) described as 'complementary' positions — that is, the bodies of Virgin and Child are turned towards one another, though their heads may turn out towards the viewer. The first of the two, and the object of Kitzinger's study, is the coffin of St Cuthbert, a late seventh-century wood carving which is particularly interesting in that the Child holds a scroll (Ill. 861), as at Dewsbury, and is part of a programme which includes seven archangels, the twelve apostles led by Peter and Paul, named and with attributes, such as the keys of Peter and the bald and bearded Paul, and the figure of Christ blessing and surrounded by the symbols of the four Evangelists (see Dewsbury 1–3, p. 131). Kitzinger suggested that this grouping represented a litany of prayers, 'here laid down in a permanent and visual form', intended to protect the relics (ibid., 279–80). In the instance of the coffin there may have been a protective function, but the idea of a prayer in wood or stone, as in the grouping of scenes and figures on the cross, suggests another, not necessarily exclusive, interpretation for the combination of figures at Dewsbury.

Kitzinger believed that the image of the Virgin and Child adored by angels in the Book of Kells (Alexander 1978, cat. 52, ill. 233)[2] was based on the same model, of Byzantine inspiration but perhaps executed in the Byzantine-influenced Rome of the seventh century. Clayton (1990, 148), however, accepted a suggestion by Wright (1961, 146) that the two were based on different models of the same style, because the intention behind the two scenes is clearly different, with that in Kells (in which the Child looks up to his mother and touches her hand and her breast) emphasising Christ's humanity through Mary; while the Cuthbert coffin, in which the Child looks out towards the spectator and carries a scroll, stresses Christ's divinity. The Dewsbury example, Clayton thought, emphasises Christ's two-fold nature, with both the scroll and his hand touching the Virgin's breast: the latter detail, however, cannot be confirmed. It is interesting that Wright also saw the Dewsbury Virgin and Child as the most classical of the Northumbrian examples of the scene, with the detail that she turns slightly to the left, away from the Child, but looks directly out toward the viewer, comparable to a seventh-century icon from Mount Sinai (1961, 146).

The scene at Dewsbury is undoubtedly part of the eighth/ ninth century revival of early Christian and late antique models, with its use of the architectural frame. In this respect it may also be compared to the Virgin and Child in the Adoration scene on the front of the Franks casket, of the first half of the eighth century (Webster 1999, 232, fig. 19.2).
Here Mother and Child are enthroned beneath an arch, in a very hieratic image in which no attempt is made to portray the lower half of either body. This appears to be the central frontal type, but interestingly the drawing of eyes and nose of both faces suggests a three-quarters profile. Both other early sculptured versions of the scene conform to this pattern, at for example Sandbach, Cheshire, where the slightly awkward three-quarters view is however ascribed to adaptation of the profile model to a cross-shaft (Hawkes 1989, I, 293). The second example shows this motif elevated to the cross-head, on the churchyard cross from Eyam, Derbyshire (Routh 1937, pl. XIVB). Nevertheless the suggestion of a particularly close connection with the image on the Cuthbert coffin made by Hawkes (1997a, 127–8) is interesting in the light of the Lindisfarne connection I also make with reference to Dewsbury 5, most probably part of the same shaft (see below, p. 138).

The tangled scroll on face B is clearly based on a medallion scroll with interlinked shoots in the centre of the medallion, and terminating tendrils above. It seems to share characteristics with other major Deiran monastic sculptures and rather interestingly shows links to Otley of the late eighth to early ninth centuries (see Chap. V, p. 53).

Late eighth to early ninth century

Whitaker 1816, I, 301, pl. facing 299; Whitaker 1859, 153–4, fig. on 157; Fowler 1870, 223; Robinson, J. 1872, 10, and fig.; Allen and Browne 1885, 354; Allen 1890, 297, 310; Allen 1891, 163, no. 7; Morris 1911, 174; Collingwood 1912, 113, 129; Lethaby 1913, 159, fig. 14; Collingwood 1915a, 163–4, 274, 282, figs. d–e on 164; Collingwood 1916–18, 46, fig. 22; Brøndsted 1924, 43, fig. 28; Collingwood 1927, 6–7, 33, 38, 73, 74, 109, 116, figs. 13(6), 91d–e; Collingwood 1929, 25, 27, 28, figs. d–e on 25; Brown 1937, 186–7, pl. LIV, 1; Mee 1941, pl. facing 80; Pevsner 1959, 179; Wright 1961, 146; Cramp 1967, 29, cat. 54; Cramp 1977, 210; Cramp and Lang 1977, cat. 2b, and pls.; Clayton 1990, 148, 156, 201, 267; Cramp 1992, 193; Sidebottom 1994, 87–8, 246–7, no. 6, and pls.; Cramp 1995, 132; Hawkes 1997a, 108, 118, 121, 122, 123, 124, 128, 133, 134, fig. 7; Cramp 1999, 9; Hadley 2000a, 248; Lang 2001, 221; Hawkes 2002a, 36n; Hawkes 2002b, 343–4; Hawkes 2003b, 366; Cramp 2006a, 219

[1] The following are general references to the Dewsbury stones: Hunter 1834, 149–68; Nichols 1836, 39; Haigh 1857, 155n; Hübner 1876, 63, no. 173; Browne 1885–6, 128; Allen 1889, 129, 213, 217–18, 220, 222; Allen 1890, 293; Fowler 1903, 128; MacMichael 1906, 360–1; Morris 1911, 46, 174–5; Lethaby 1913, 158–9; Collingwood 1915b, 334; Glynne 1917a, 191; Collingwood 1923, 7; Collingwood 1927, 6–7, 33, 74, 109, 116, fig. 13(6); Collingwood 1929, 17, 22, 24, 28–9, 30, 33, fig. on 28; Collingwood 1932, 51, 53; Elgee and Elgee 1933, 196, fig. 36; Mee 1941, 119; Pevsner 1959, 20, 179; Cramp 1978a, 9; Faull 1981, 218; Ryder 1991, 20; Ryder 1993, 18, 149; Sidebottom 1994, 87–8, 156; Page 1995, 298; Lang and Wrathmell 1997, 375; Hadley 2000a, 248; Butler 2006, 93.

[2] Dublin, Trinty College Lib., MS A. I. 6, fol. 7v.