Tomb - effigial, Gardens, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Tombs & Memorials
In the roofless chancel of St John's Priory in Kilkenny, open to the sky and set into a recess in the north wall, a late medieval tomb holds two effigies on separate slabs.
The knight is badly damaged, his head and feet entirely lost, yet enough of his armour survives to reward close attention. The woman beside him is remarkably well preserved, and it is her figure that pulls the eye: a long gown with tubular folds, sleeves buttoned nearly to the shoulder, a wide girdle ornamented with quatrefoils, and on her head a heart-shaped head-dress with a finely pleated barbe falling beneath her chin. That barbe, a cloth covering worn from cheek to chin, is a detail associated with widowhood, suggesting she outlived her husband and perhaps commissioned or at least influenced the monument herself.
The inscription, carved in raised Black Letter script on the folds of her dress and continued across the mensa, the flat top slab of the chest, was transcribed by Carrigan in 1905 as recording that Johanna Purcell died on the sixth day of an unnamed month in the year 1500. Her husband's name is mostly lost to damage, surviving only as Purcell. The armour on the knight's effigy was analysed in detail by Hunt in 1974, who identified it as broadly of the Ossory type but with refinements: narrower, more gothic leg defences with a pronounced keel along the cuisses and greaves, gauntlets with chevron fluting, and a sword slung across the body from a strap over the right shoulder, a arrangement he noted also at Gowran. The front panel of the chest is carved with seven ogee-headed niches, each containing an apostle identified by a carved name and by his traditional attribute: Peter with his keys, Andrew with his saltire cross, James Major in his pilgrim's hat, Philip holding a cloth containing five loaves. The end slab at the feet carries St Bartholomew with a flesher's knife and St Simon with a pole-axe. The head-end adds a Crucifixion scene on one side and an unnamed archbishop in a decorated mitre on the other. The whole monument has been attributed to the O'Tunney workshop, a family of sculptors working in the Kilkenny region whose output during this period was prolific and whose style is recognisable across a number of comparable effigial tombs in the area.
