Wall Paintings from St Stephen's Chapel, Palace of Westminster

Palace of Westminster, London, England
About AD 1349-62

Scenes from the Biblical story of Job and Tobit

The royal chapel at the Palace of Westminster was dedicated to St Stephen. It was built on two levels: members of the royal household and court were admitted to the lower level, while the upper chapel was reserved for the royal family and clergy.

Most of the upper chapel was completed during the reign of Edward III (1327-77). It was richly decorated to a very high standard, as these surviving fragments of wall paintings show. They depict scenes from the biblical Books of Job and Tobit, with explanations in inscriptions. They are identified as:

Tobit being blinded by bird dung (Tobit 2:9-10)
The blind Tobit (Tobit 2:9-10)
The marriage of Tobias to Sarah (Tobit 8:19-21)
The departure of the archangel Raphael (Tobit 9:5)

Job addressing his sons
The daughters of Job requesting to visit their brothers
The destruction of Job's children at a banquet (Job 2:18-19)
Job learning of the destruction of his children (Job 2:20-21)
Job with Zophar the Naamathite (Job 11:2-20)
The rebuking of Job's comforters (Job 42: 7-10

The paintings were executed in the international courtly style that was fashionable at the time, using expensive materials and drawing heavily on Italian influences. They were originally arranged in two tiers of four scenes, below the five windows of each side wall. These fragmentary remains give little impression of the grand scale of the original scheme, which might have numbered as many as 160 scenes and included topics drawn from the New Testament and the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine.

They were hidden from view for hundreds of years, and only re-discovered in 1880-1, when the building works of James Wyatt ('the destroyer') uncovered them. The paintings in The British Museum are rare survivals from the subsequent demolition that occurred.

J. Alexander and P. Binski, Age of chivalry: art in Planta (Royal Academy, London, 1987)

J. Cherry and N. Stratford, Westminster kings and the Medi, British Museum Occasional Paper 115 (, 1995)

J. Robinson, Masterpieces: Medieval Art (London, British Museum Press, 2008)