James Essex’s work is noted in Jonathan Foyle’s admirable new illustrated book, Lincoln Cathedral: The Biography of a Great Building. It really is a biography. In narrating the life of the cathedral since its Norman birth, the author also provides a coherent sense of the building’s anatomy. He’s good on explaining when sculpture and structure are more modern work than their setting suggests.
When he shows the wonders of the 13th-century Angel Quire, which certainly lives up to Ruskin’s praise, he brings the reader in, not through the cathedral’s “front door” at the west end, but through the Judgment portal. This is right at the other end, beyond the high altar, on the south side. It struck me that an imaginary pilgrim entering by this door must have felt like one entering the cathedral at Santiago by way of the Puerta de la Gloria, sculpted in the previous century. (There’s a plaster cast of it in the V&A in London.)
Above the doorway, Christ sits in judgment. As Dr Foyle remarks (with a glance at a painting by Hans Memling), the exuberant Gothic doorway resembles medieval artists’ idea of the gate of Heaven itself. Once inside, the pilgrim finds angels carved all about, many playing musical instruments.