A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

back of the Hall; in the right corner was a nineteenth-century statue of a lady now in Speke Hall in Liverpool, evidently carved as a companion piece. Both were purchased by the Walker Art Gallery when Scarisbrick Hall was sold in 1 963. 18 Th ese two figures belonged with five pairs of kings and queens placed to either side of the windows which, as part of the fabric, escaped earlier Scarisbrick sa les. 19 Al though late-Gothic woodcarving was re-used elsewhere at Scarisbrick sometimes in the most cavalier way, Pugin was far from ignorant about late-Gothic sculpture and its original functions; the possibility remains that the Knight was installed in the Great Hall because Pugin understood it to be a secular statue suitable for the purpose. Subsequently it has been understood either as a martial saint or as one of the Magi from a monumental Adoration of the M agi. 20 O f the various possibilities, there is more evidence that the Knight might originally have been a secular dynastic statue. The Knight wears the armour appropriate for a martial saint but is a fully three-dimensional statue designed for a setting requiring a 360° viewing arc. It could have been placed on a corbel attached to a column, perhaps, but it was evidently not designed to be placed in a niche as a statue of a saint might be. Although the shell motif on the armour might appear to evoke pilgrimage through its association with St James of Compostela, this is not necessarily the attribute of a martial saint: the motif is found elsewhere on simulated armour as a purely decorative element. The bronze statue of Theodoric (454-526), designed by Albrecht Dürer and cast by Peter Vischer in Nuremberg in 1513 for the mausoleum of Maximilian I at Innsbruck, has armour with a similar albeit not identical shell mo tif. 21 Ra ther than a martial saint, the Scarisbrick figure could be a secular statue of a knight in a fashionable hat and armour. The octagonal base is relatively complete if much repaired, but this is not inconsistent with a monumental freestanding Adoration of the Magi. The ­ figure has omitted to remove his hat as reverence usually required, but in ­ Antwerp mannerist paintings of the theme the second Magus is occasionally represented with his hat still on, as in one version by the Master of the Antwerp Adoration of around 1 520. 22 Th e Magi never wear armour in Antwerp manner- ist paintings, however, or indeed in other Adorations later than the first half of the fifteenth century: the Rhenish ivory Adoration of the Magi in the Thomson collection (Ontario) shows the Magi in armour and has been dated to 1450 or thereabouts but radiocarbon dating suggests a date of no later than around 1 430. 23 It seems implausible that this Elsloo workshop should have revived such antiquated models. It seems unlikely that the Knight was indeed intended to be one of the three Magi. The gesture of the Knight’s hands is consistent neither with a martial saint nor with one of the three Magi. At the time that it was acquired by the Walker Art Gallery, the statue carried a sword in its left hand, but this was not­ original. There is no scabbard for a sword, and the left hand was re-drilled to accommodate the sword handle. The fingers are still roughly in their original configuration, however, and do appear to have held a thin cylindrical object of some sort. There is damage between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand where something has broken away, but the hand itself has not been re-carved. Whatever the right hand supported was not firmly grasped