Professor Moriarty

The four stained glass panels designed by Henry Holiday and made by James Powell & Sons (Whitefriars Glass) in 1891 form one of the most refined and spiritually resonant decorative ensembles in Salisbury Cathedral. Conceived as a unified series, they portray eight women of Scripture, Sarah and Hannah, Mary the Virgin and Mary the Mother of James, Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene, and Ruth and Esther, each pair chosen to express a distinct yet harmonizing aspect of faith, devotion, and divine purpose.

This finely carved effigy represents a 13th-century bishop, shown lying in state with hands raised in prayer. The figure is sculpted from dark Purbeck marble, a material much used in English cathedrals of the period. The bishop is depicted wearing liturgical vestments, including the mitre and chasuble, and rests beneath an elaborately canopied tomb.

Constructed between 1437 and 1521, the Church of Saint-Maclou occupies a central place in Rouen’s urban and spiritual landscape. The façade, rising before the narrow medieval streets, is one of the most refined expressions of the Flamboyant Gothic, a style characterized by intricate tracery, dynamic ornament, and an almost musical rhythm of line.

Situated in the east window of the south aisle, of the church of St Peter and St Paul, Maidford, Northamptonshire, this stained-glass memorial commemorates Arthur William Grant, who died on 19 December 1878, aged fifty-five. The window was installed circa 1880, by John Hardman & Co. of Birmingham, whose workshop was among the foremost exponents of the Gothic Revival style.

The floor slab to Lady Harrington in St Mary’s Church, Gayton, is a fine example of 17th-century commemorative stonework, combining formal design with a strikingly personal tone. Carved from smooth local limestone, its simple border and restrained scrollwork at either end frame an inscription notable for both its clarity and warmth.

This finely carved coffin lid features a long-stemmed cross whose arms terminate in deeply incised, curling foliage, a design symbolising both the Cross of Christ and the Tree of Life. The leafy ornament, known as a foliated cross, became popular in the 13th century and is often associated with clerical burials or those of prominent parishioners.

The choir stalls of the collegiate church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste at Montrésor form one of the most eloquent ensembles of Renaissance woodcarving in Touraine. They were made around 1530-1540, when Imbert de Batarnay, seigneur of Montrésor and counsellor to four French kings, endowed the new collegiate foundation he had created in 1521.

Scholastica de Gayton, who died in 1354, was a member of the medieval de Gayton family, long associated with the village of Gayton in Northamptonshire. She was the daughter of Sir Philip de Gayton, who died in 1316 and whose own effigy also survives in the church of St Mary the Virgin at Gayton.

In fifteenth-century Florence, the image of the Virgin and Child underwent a quiet revolution. From the solemn, hieratic figures of late Gothic piety, the Madonna became an image of tender humanity, no longer distant and majestic, but immediate, emotional, and profoundly relatable. This transformation mirrors a broader shift in Renaissance devotion: the movement of sacred experience from church to home, from the grandeur of the altar to the intimacy of domestic life.