In conjunction with my research on medieval English sculpture, I have been working on the medieval citole in the British Museum. My interest in the instrument goes back a long time, well over a decade ago in fact, when the musicologist and instrument maker Kate Buehler-McWilliams first interested me in its imagery.
The citole, a stringed instrument which was a kind of medieval precursor to the guitar, dates from the early fourteenth century and is the only surviving example from the English middle ages. It was modified in the sixteenth century and turned into a violin for Queen Elizabeth I, but its wonderful medieval reliefs remain more or less intact. It is a unique example of a secular instrument from the period, which we would otherwise know only through representations in manuscript illuminations or sculpture. Its head, carved with a superb two-legged dragon, sides and back, are covered with reliefs depicting foliage, hunters, animals, birds and weird hybrid creatures.
I have been working on sculptural parallels for the reliefs on the citole and would be particularly interested if anyone knows of examples, which probably exist in Norwich or nearby, which resemble these on the back: a gurning male head, a pair of symmetrically organised lions and a pair of goats. I am just about to travel to Norwich and to Winchester (where a Norfolk team of joiners and sculptors worked on the choir stalls in the early fourteenth century) and would welcome help from anyone who knows similar images to these: my best guess is that they will be datable between about 1310 and 1330!
Comment here or contact me directly at pgl1@le.ac.uk
Click the image to see it on a large size:
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