TURNING the corner from Cork Street into Clifford Street, in the heart of Mayfair, in London, you find a window display of a single medieval tile. It is richly glazed and deeply moulded with a colourful three-dimensional relief. Is it Samson and the Lion or is it Hercules at Nemea?
That the medieval Church was at ease with associating the classical era and Islam with Christianity is elsewhere underscored in the most recent show to open here. Sam Fogg has for more than 30 years shown exceptional pieces from across Christendom, not just from central and Western Europe, as highlighted in “Art in the Service of Faith”, but from farther afield: Syria, Iraq, and Ethiopia.
An illuminated Book of Hours (c.1485) from Tours, in the Loire Valley, lies open at a page depicting King David playing his harp at Psalm 7. The book is decorated by Jean Bourdichon (1457-1527), who served Kings Louis XI, Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I. The volume is inscribed with the initials of the patrons. In a handwritten note penned in the page, David’s skill is ranked above that of Orpheus, Orion, and Phoebus (otherwise known as Apollo).
More striking, partly because of its monumental scale, is a panel from the high altarpiece painted by Fernando Gallego (Salamanca, active 1468-1507) for the Castilian cathedral in Ciudad Rodrigo, c.1480-88. Twenty-six panels from this celebrated retablo were among the extended purchases made by Samuel H. Kress from the English politician Sir Frederick Cook, Bt., Visconde de Monserrate (1844-1920), from his collections at Doughty House, Richmond.
Kress bequeathed most of his holdings to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, but he also honoured his sister-in-law, who was an alumna of the University of Arizona, where they are currently displayed. Fogg has a single panel of a full-bearded saint holding his sword downward by its hilt with his right hand. In his left, he holds up a book that is clasped shut. Its cover is studded with metal medallions, and its pages are gold-tooled.
St Paul, surely? Rather, as engraved on the side of his sword, it is St Albert the Great (d.1280), the Dominican scientist and scholar known as Doctor Universalis. He discovered the properties of arsenic and related Aristotle’s works to Christian revelation. He was well read in the tradition of Islamic scholars. Here, standing at his most Pauline, he is vested in a deep green robe rather than in a Dominican habit; arsenic-based green pigments were not known until the 18th century.
Coming in off the street, one is first confronted by a burly, heavily bearded 16th-century St Christopher from the eastern Netherlands. The boy Jesus stands on his shoulders, with the orb of the world in his surviving left hand. It must once have stood in a church, offering all who looked on it safety in their travel. Christ’s missing right hand would have been upraised in blessing.
Alongside, there is a domestic devotional image of the Volto Santo which comes from the southern Tyrol or the north-Italian region of the Dolomites. The Crucified has a foliate crown of thorns (Books, 2 April 2026), his haggard face dripping with tears of blood. Psalm 51 came to mind.
Sam Fogg The Virgin Annunciate Siena, Italy (c.1500). From a private collectionOn the opposite wall are three narrative panels from a monumental south-German (or Tyrolese) altarpiece of the Virgin Mary, which was carved and polychromed at the end of the 16th century. All the figures, including the innkeeper and Joseph in Bethlehem, are garbed in gilded paint, as are the Twelve Apostles crowded around in the Dormition. St John sits pensively at the foot of the bed while a colleague sings the Office of the Dead. Incense and holy water are carried. In the Annunciation, Gabriel has not fully gained the Virgin’s attention, as she still holds open her book, although her eyes register that she is aware of someone reading over her shoulder.
There are several works from Siena in this show, including the gold-ground panels of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist painted around the mid-1370s by Bartolo di Fredi, possibly for the Dominicans in San Gimignano. Bartolo was the most important painter in Siena in the second half of the 14th century. Both panels have twice recently been seen in London salerooms (Christie’s in 2003 and Sotheby’s last year).
It is a privilege to see them here in the quiet calm of a gallery in the company of the life-sized polychrome statue of the Virgin Annunciate (c.1500). Vested in a red- and gold-embroidered dress, she stands demurely with her right hand at her breast. Her master carver could not know what carnage in the name of religion would engulf so much of Christendom within a generation.
“Art in the Service of Faith” is at Sam Fogg, 15a Clifford Street, London W1, until 10 July. Phone 020 7534 2100. samfogg.com