The Style and Function of the Cameos on the Frame of the Westminster Retable

Abstract

Abstract The imitation cameos placed around the frame of the Westminster Retable had a deeply entrenched cultural context in the re-use of classical gemstones in many examples of medieval goldsmiths’ work. But the cameos on the Retable had arguably a more local and immediate thirteenth-century context, both stylistically and iconographically, in the choice of images displayed. This paper relates the paired jugate heads in a cameo known from photographs but now lost, and the one surviving cameo head with its very specific winged headdress, to similar images in other media – book painting and sculpture – both in England and in France. It also, though very tentatively, given the loss of the great bulk of the cameos formerly on the frame, attempts to identify the persons represented in the cameos in relation to the overall programme of the Retable, not restricting this identification to any obvious antique parallels.

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