Architectural Fragment: Bishop

This elaborately ornamented, five-sided architectural fragment provides a splendid setting for the full-length carved figure of a bishop. Dressed in the garments appropriate to his official position in the church hierarchy and holding his pastoral staff, or crozier, the bishop elegantly embodies the Church's authority. Despite the damage this figure has suffered, and the signs of age, wear, and fragmentation that strew the surfaces of the framing architectural structure, traces of colored paint endure on the figure of the bishop. This work reveals many hallmarks of the Gothic style that followed the Romanesque: especially the cusped arches and pointed gables topped by vegetal crocketing, which give it a period refinement. On the reverse side, we find a recess carved into the pentagonal block, in which a groove has been cut, likely in order to accommodate a small shelf. This suggests that the fragment was once part of a tabernacle: an elaborate, freestanding cupboard in which ritual vessels and perhaps consecrated communion wafers were kept. Stone tabernacles proliferated in church interiors during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but few examples are known from the region of Burgundy, making this fragment a precious survivor that deserves greater attention than it has yet received.