Athena

Getting to grips with wall paintings IN 1871, a 24-year-old law graduate, Charles E. Keyser, published the first ever national survey of medieval wall paintings. A list of buildings in Great Britain and Ireland having mural and other painted decorations, of dates prior to the latter part of the sixteenth century, with historical introduction and alphabetical index of subjects is a prodigious work with short descriptions and bibliographic references relating to every example then known. Given the labour involved, it is perhaps not surprising that Keyser, a stock-broker by profession, became president of the British Archaeological Association. The principal lack of his survey—illustrations—was later made good by an equally industrious and remarkable figure, Ernest W. Tristram, a professor of Art and Design, who produced thousands of exacting copies of wall paintings and…