A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

151 Kim Woods 7 150 of Guelders described the house of Egmond as descended from Hercules ­ Alema nus. 12 W hether the London figure is Samson, Hercules or both, it could conceivably have had the political connotations of taming and silencing an enemy as well as a heroic and religious significance. The dominance of Samson/Hercules over the lion may be difficult to interpret, but it seems likely that this was a chivalric image of courage rather than one of exclusively religious significance, and that it might have been designed for a high status secular client. This begs the question of whom that client might have been, a question even more pertinent for the Liverpool Knight. The Liverpool Knight The statue of a Knight in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool (figs. 7.1, 7.3) has been little studied, partly because it came to public notice only when sold from a private collection in 1963. It too presents problems of interpretation. The oak statue is 165 centimetres tall, so slightly under life-size, and after the St Christopher in Heinsberg church (359 cm) is one of the largest statues associated with the Master of Elsloo. The height of the St Christopher may be accounted for by the legend that Christopher was a giant; the scale of the Liverpool Knight, conversely, is arguably key to its importance and status. This armoured figure has elements of contemporary dress, notably the ­ fashionable hat with the elaborate net covering the hair. This hat can be dated to between 1515 and 1525; the abovementioned boxwood bust of Philibert of Savoy by Conrad Meit has a very similar hat and can be dated using the inventories of Margaret of Austria to before 1 523. 13 The Knight comes from the Great Hall at Scarisbrick Hall north of Liverpool. Its owner, Charles Scarisbrick (1800-1860), purchased large quantities of ­ continental woodcarving, some of it fromWardour Street dealer Edward Hull and from 1847 from his son George, the most important dealers in imported Gothic woodcarvings in London in the second quarter of the nineteenth ­ centu ry. 14 Th e Great Hall was refurbished for Scarisbrick by the neo-Gothic architect A.W.N. Pugin, who worked at Scarisbrick from 1837 until 1845. Pugin was also a collector of late-Gothic art and artefacts and it was he who owned the St Christopher attributed to the Master of Elsloo and now in the Victoria and Albert Muse um. 15 Sc arisbrick, Pugin and perhaps Hull evidently had a means of purchasing works of art from the Limburg area, perhaps in Liège, which Pugin visited in 1839 and 1841; on each occasion, Pugin visited­ Scarisbrick shortly after his return to Engla nd. 16 Th e stained glass windows from Herkenrode Abbey were purchased for Lichfield Cathedral by Brooke Boothby while staying in Liège in 1802-18 03. 17 O ther English visitors such as the Earl of Shrewsbury, Pugin’s patron, stayed at nearby Spa, where there was a Société Anglaise. Even more important than the means by which the English purchased carving from Limburg is their desire to do so. At Scarisbrick the Knight was definitely displayed as a secular figure: it was placed high up in a niche still surviving in the left corner of the screen at the