MEDIAEVAL PAINTING saint, although the panels of the retablcs of the end of the fourteenth century previously described are filled with compositions of many figures. It might be expected that this example would be followed in the later and similar work, of the next period, but this is not the case, and compositions comprising several or many figures are very seldom to be found. When they do occur, they indicate a late date, sixteenth rather than fifteenth century work. The question of the date of the painted figures on Norfolk screens is a most difficult one to decide. In some instances, in late work, the costume affords a means of determining the period at which they were executed, but for the generality the purely conventional treatment of the draperies scarcely allows a guess as to date. The armour borne by warrior saints is invariably of plate, but there is a fanciful element in its representation which renders judgment as to date by no means easy. Repaintings have also to be taken into account, and the fact that the panels of any given screen may possibly not have been all executed at once, but were the gifts of various donors, so that the completion of the adornment of a screen might be deferred for years. In the following list the dates can only be fixed, in most instances, approximately ; though in some cases inscriptions on the screens themselves affiard a certainty as to the period of the execution of the paintings upon them. The earliest to be named here is that given by Carthew, the his- torian of the Hundred of Launditch, to the work in the church of Litcham, which he conceives was of the time of Henry VI., about 1430, but he adduces no evidence for this date.^ As to the next we are on somewhat surer ground. The screen of the Lady chapel in the south aisle of the church of St. John Maddermarket in Norwich had, as usual, its panels painted with various saints. Above the figures white shields were depicted bearing alternately a capital letter S, the initial letter of the name Segrym, and a merchant's mark. Ralf Segrym, whose mark and initial were thus displayed, and who from this circumstance "was doubtless the giver of the painted panels, perhaps of the screen itself, was Mayor of Norwich in 1451, and it may be conjectured that the work in question was executed about the date of his mayoralty. After the destruction of the screen some of the panels came into private hands, from which they passed to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where they may now be seen. More certain than either of the dates just cited is that of the paintings at Burnham Norton, for the screen there bears, or bore, the following inscription : Orate pro animabus Willelmi Groom et Johanne consortis sue qui istam fabricam fecerunt deptngi in honor e . . . Anno Dni. Millesimo CCCCLVIIF quorum anima- bus propicietur Deus Amen."] Here both the names of the donors and the date of the paintings are given.^ The erection of the screen at Cawston, one of the most interesting of these fabrics in Norfolk, can also be dated with certainty, though the years in which the major portion of the paintings was executed are unknown. An inhabitant of the village, a certain John Barker by name, 'gave ten marks in 1460 towards building the rood-loft commonly called the candle beam.' An 1 Carthew, Hist, of the Hundred of Launditch, pt. ii. 419.
- Blomefield, Hist. ofNorf. (1807), vii. 17.
