File:WLA vanda Alabaster Panel The Ascension English ca 1400-1425.jpg

Panel - The Ascension
Alabaster, carved in painted wooden frame
English
1400 - 25

This finely carved panel has an embattled top. The feet of Christ and the lower part of his gown are represented at the top of the panel, ascending into a formalised cloud. Half-length figures of angels are shown on a mound beneath the figure of Christ, around which the apostles and the Virgin Mary are grouped, wearing gowns and cloaks. They look up at him as he disappears. The tonsured and bearded St. Peter, pressing his emblem, the key, under his right arm, kneels in the front of the panel facing St. Andrew, who kneels in the front of the panel facing St. Andrew, who kneels on the right holding his emblem, the saltire cross, with his left hand. Their cloaks drape over the bottom edge of the panel. Next to St. Peter on the left kneels St. James the Great, bearded, wearing a conical hat adorned with a scallop shell and holding a closed book in his left hand and the pilgrim's staff in his right. Another bearded apostle kneels behind him. In the row behind on the left of the panel are the bareheaded Virgin, a bearded apostle and the beardless figure of St. Philip, holding a loaf. Next to St. Andrew on the right of the panel kneel the figures of St. Jude, holding a boat, and St. Simon, holding a scallop shell. In the row behind, facing the Virgin Mary, is the beardless figure of St. John the Evangelist. Next to them are two other bearded apostles.

The panel is encased in a seventeenth-century wooded housing which perpetuates a late medieval practice. The two wings of the housing are painted with a Crucifixion on the left and an Ascension on the right The painted inscriptions on the wings read 'This Peice was found in ye Ruines of A...house att... near York' and 'Procur'd & Beautify'd by William Richardon of Northbierly: 1689'.

Museum no. A.112-1946