The Chaldon doom
For some reason, Simon Jenkins only rates St Peter and St Paul at Chaldon in Surrey as worth one star, which just goes to show there’s no accounting for taste. I think it is stupendous: well worth the hour and a half it took me to get there in the car. The wall paintings are quite early, dating from the late twelfth century. The demons, above, torturing dishonest craftsmen and a usurer in the centre, certainly grab the attention. The seven deadly sins are represented as well.
Unusually, the doom is placed at the west of the church, rather than over the chancel arch. Perhaps those nine demons were just too frightening. But there’s a whole scheme of belief here, with five angels on the top row and Christ spearing one of the demons on the right.
The tree of knowledge, with serpent:
The weighing of souls, with the penitent looking out for the particularly scary demon who is playing with the scales, in order to cast him to damnation:
The three Marys being led to heaven by an angel, with the penitent thief above:
Its all very schematic, but expressive at the same time. Picasso would have loved it! It reminds us that Hieronymous Bosch and Michelangelo didn’t invent their visions of hell, but were working from a much older tradition.
