The dentists see their saint in a glass brightly
John Gunn, a clergyman of antiquarian interests, unperturbed by the outbreak of war in Europe, continued his visit to Rome from 1792 to the following year, accompanied by his wife and young daughter. It was in the nick of time that he returned to his Norfolk parish in October 1793.
St Michael, Barton Turf, was being spruced up in his absence and the glories of its chancel screen, painted in the 15th century with angels and saints, were revealed. But the workmen were on the brink of painting it over. “The paint was just mixed, and the first dab was laid upon the left arm of the Potestates [an order of angels] when he arrested the work of destruction.”
Thank heavens he did, for the angels in their feathery suits and the woman saints beside them under their Gothic tracery are among the finest such paintings left to us in England. They cover the solid part, up to waist height, of the screen between nave and chancel, which is open woodwork in its upper part, so that the altar is clearly visible.
The saints on the screen at Barton Turf are St Barbara, invoked against the dangers of lightning and of sudden death; St Sitha, perhaps better known now as Zita, a maid in her earthly career, and now regarded as very useful for finding car keys; and St Apollonia, holding a pair of pincers with a tooth in them. She was martyred in the third century and her prayers were sought by people with toothache, which must have been a dread prospect indeed until modern times.
Richard III was known to have had a devotion to St Apollonia, and the learned John F Beal (who has also enumerated the 50 or so churches connected with the saint) links the king’s choice of patron saint with his own dental deficiencies, perhaps caused by the more sugar-rich diet of the upper classes of his time.
The saint continued
to figure prominently in English churches on the verge of the Reformation. In 1528, at Horsham St Faith, north of Norwich, William Wuley paid for images of helper saints, including St Apollonia and St Roche, to be painted on the screen, in the company of St Catherine of Siena and St Bridget of Sweden, probably, in the opinion of the great scholar of this period, Eamon Duffy, because of the donor’s interest in their devotional writing. Later she figured in Zurbarán’s series of beautifully dressed woman saints, now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville.
Anyway, St Apollonia is a bearer on the coat of arms of the British Dental Association. She looks out at me from its bookplate in the volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography
that I bought second-hand some years ago. And now the dentists have bought a beautiful stained-glass window of the saint (above), to be displayed in their museum in Wimpole Street (open Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1pm to 4pm).
There she stands, book in one hand and pincers in the other, clothed in a rich red tunic against the blue background, her yellow hair garlanded with flowers. The pale delineation of her face reveals under magnification a fine pair of buck teeth.
The dentists paid £5,000 or so for their window, sold by Sam Fogg. This reputable Mayfair dealer, has also, for example, sold a 13thcentury panel of a prophet to the British Museum. It had been taken down from a ceiling of Westminster Palace in 1816 during restorations and was rediscovered in Bristol in 1993. Such things turn up and have to be recognised.
The dentists’ window apparently came originally from St Mary’s church, Charlynch, in Somerset. The Grade I listed church is now deconsecrated, and it is not clear when it lost its medieval glass.