Stained Glass Panel of St Curthbert
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Object number20660.1
TitleStained Glass Panel of St Curthbert
Creator Isabel. Mary. Wood (Artist)
DescriptionThis beautiful stained-glass panel captures the moment when Cuthbert, as a boy, sees the soul of St Aiden entering heaven. It was made by artist Mary Isobel Wood in 1928, inspired by Bede’s Life of Cuthbert. It led to a major commission to make a stained-glass window for St Cuthbert’s Church in Edinburgh.
It illustrates the moment when the shepherd boy Cuthbert decides to follow the religious life. How young he looks, gazing in wonder at the angels ushering Aiden into heaven! The colours are jewel-like: the stars shine from a deep blue; the angels’ wings are echoed in the reds and indigos of Cuthbert’s cloak and the night sky.
Cuthbert (635-687) was an influential churchman responsible for the spread of Christianity in the North of England. During his life, he was an inspirational preacher and a hermit, Prior of Melrose and Lindisfarne Abbeys. He embodied the values of humility, simplicity and tolerance. In death, he was treated as a saint, his ultimate resting place at Durham associated with miracles. It was the most important place of pilgrimage in England for almost 500 years until the death of St Thomas Becket in the 12th century.
Mary Isobel Wood was born and brought up in Edinburgh in the late 19th century. She attended Edinburgh College of art, where she later taught stained glass. Examples of her stained glass can also be found in a memorial window for her family in Bowden Kirk, Melrose, at Kirkliston, and on the Isle of Lismore.
DescriptionStained glass window by Mary Isobel Wood, 1928, showing the vision of the shepherd boy Cuthbert on the Lammermuir hills, as told in Bede’s Life of Cuthbert:
One night, whilst his companions were asleep, and he himself awake and at prayer, he suddenly saw a long stream of light break through the darkness of the night, and in the midst of it a company of the heavenly host descended to the earth, and having received among them a spirit of surpassing brightness, returned without delay to their heavenly home. When the morning was come, he found that Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne, a man of exalted piety, had ascended to the heavenly kingdom at the very moment of his vision. Immediately therefore he delivered over the sheep which he was feeding and resolved to enter a monastery. see notes fro his life
Production date 1928
Object nameGlass, stained glass window