Sculpture in Britain - the Middle Ages

This text deals with English sculpture from the 7th century until the dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530's and the iconoclastic attack on religious imagery between 1547 and 1553.

Although losses of sculpture far exceed those of architecture, documentary evidence has provided the names and dates of many medieval sculptors and their works.

Stone divides this survey into five parts. The first treats the pre-Conquest sculpture of Northumbria, the Carolingian Revival, and Anglo-Danish art.

This is followed by the Early Norman and Romanesque periods from the Conquest to the late 12th century; the 13th-century cathedral sculpture at Westminster, Wells, Salisbury, Lincoln and others; the Decorated period from 1275 to 1350; the late medieval sculpture from 1350 to the Reformation.

A feature common to all these periods was the resistance of the native sculptor to influences from the Continent.