The systematic study of medieval wall painting often is hindered by the historical loss of paintings, which certainly has been the case in England and Wales. The majority of religious wall paintings in England were destroyed in the decades of whitewashing and defacing that followed the Reformation, leaving behind a severely fragmented view of a major and complex visual tradition. Additionally, scholarship on medieval wall painting sometimes has the tendency to prioritize paintings produced in monastic or royal contexts over those found in parish churches. In this book, Roger Rosewell offers a synthetic overview of medieval wall paintings in England and, to a lesser extent, Wales that includes a broad range of material from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries and spends as much time exploring the painted walls of parish churches as those of great cathedrals. The result is one of the most thorough surveys of medieval wall painting since the publication of E. W. Tristram's foundational studies on English wall painting in the 1940s and 1950s. Rosewell refers to his book as an introduction to the topic, which sets out to answer the most basic questions—that is, who, what, when, where, and why of the best preserved English and Welsh wall paintings (5). Over 250 vivid and detailed color photographs accompany the text, making the paintings both accessible and engaging to the reader, and a gazetteer and indexical subject guide allow the reader to quickly scan over five hundred identified religious buildings with wall paintings by either location or subject matter. As a result, Rosewell admirably has provided the groundwork for future studies and analyses of a major yet often overlooked component of medieval English visual culture.

In addition to the general introduction, the book has six densely illustrated chapters, a gazetteer, a subject guide, and a select bibliography. The first two chapters, “A History of Wall Paintings” and “The Subjects,” focus on the traditional cornerstones of art historical inquiry: style and iconography. The core of the study, chapters 3, 4, and 5, cover a range of practical but interesting problems related to the production of medieval wall paintings, focusing on patronage, execution, and function. Chapter 6, by way of conclusion, outlines the fate of medieval wall paintings in England from the Reformation to the present day.

Chapter 1 contains a brief history of wall paintings from the Anglo-Saxon period to the sixteenth century, tracking changes in artistic style in relation to major changes in architectural form and subject matter. Rosewell fully considers the most popular subjects for medieval wall paintings in chapter 2, which is divided into nine general subsections, for example, Old Testament scenes, Life of Christ, Last Judgment, saints' lives, Christian allegories, and so on. Here, Rosewell is sensitive to correspondences between wall paintings and both public and private devotional practices, complementing recent and notable monographic studies on medieval devotion and the visual arts, such as Richard Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2004) and Ellen Ross, The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Chapter 3, “Patrons and Painters,” addresses the complex issue of artistic agency and, for the first time in the book, highlights important secular imagery found in English painted programs including heraldry and donor portraits. The little-known paintings and documentary evidence (inscriptions, contracts, guild records) presented in the chapter will be of particular interest to scholars working on medieval patronage, identity, and self-fashioning. In chapter 4, “Making Wall Paintings,” Rosewell usefully turns to the more technical aspects of wall painting production, from the use of model books, preparatory drawings, and stencils to the manufacture of brushes and pigments. The fifth chapter, “Meaning and Understanding,” brings together the evidence presented in the previous chapters in order to suggest why the walls of medieval churches were painted and how wall paintings functioned within the larger context of the church interior. In this packed chapter, Rosewell's general discussions complement some of the most innovative scholarship on medieval wall paintings to date. For example, he recognizes the importance of exploring programmatic connections between wall paintings and other church arts such as figural sculpture, rood screens, and stained glass—an important methodology first articulated in the collection Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings, edited by Virginia Chieffo Raguin, Kathryn Brush, and Peter Draper (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995). He also discusses the dynamic function of wall paintings as liturgical “maps,” following Matthew M. Reeve, Thirteenth-Century Wall Painting of Salisbury Cathedral (Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008), or as backdrops for ritual performances at Easter, which David Park has explored in his publications on paintings at Winchester Cathedral and Kempley. Rosewell also brings to light new evidence on the role of non-figural decorative motifs in enlivening and glorifying church architecture. His photographs capture particularly well the inventive use of painted decoration to portray draperies behind the altars of St. Peter at Martley and St. John the Baptist at Ingelsham, for instance, and to transform a plain chancel wall in the parish church at Chalfont St. Giles into a carved stone screen with an embattled parapet and pierced tracery (figs. 168–71). The final chapter, “Reformation and Rescue,” outlines major factors that account for the loss of English wall paintings, from Henry III's dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 to unfortunate church renovations and heavy-handed conservation attempts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Without doubt, this book is an indispensable reference tool for scholars of medieval art, history, religion, literature, and liturgy. Its text and overall structure, however, are geared toward the nonacademic reader. Rosewell's prose is clear and purposeful throughout, but his rudimentary and mildly sentimental summaries of popular biblical texts and saints' lives are cumbersome at times. Moreover, Rosewell did not use footnotes, which impedes the academic reader from following up sources for further analysis. This is particularly problematic regarding medieval documents quoted or discussed in the text, such as wills and contracts, because the author did not include primary sources in the bibliography. These minor criticisms are not meant to detract from the overall value and quality of this impressive contribution to medieval studies. For the academic reader, this book highlights monuments too easily overlooked, and its unparalleled collection of photographs provides visual stimulus for new research. For the enthusiast, this book with its invaluable geographical index is a sophisticated guidebook for intensive church-crawling in England and Wales.