WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE 
‘(MULTORUM MANIBUS GRANDE LEVATUR ONUS.”—Ovid, 
Aucient Roof Painting in Salisbury Cathedval. 
By the Rey. Succentor ARMFIELD, M.A,, F.S.A. 
=GHE paintings upon which I now write are but a portion— 
though no doubt the principal portion—of a vast system of 
eolour-decoration which formerly adorned Salisbury Cathedral from 
one end to the other. It is perhaps not generally observed that this 
system of colour-decoration penetrated even to the exterior of the 
Church, Both in the cartoons of the cloister and the polychrome 
_ of the western porch! there was what I imagine is comparatively 
rare in the English climate—an example of outside colour. 
The paintings under our notice now were done in medallions on 
the divisions of the vaulting of the choir; and they divide them- 
selves into two groups, the subjects of the larger medallions being 
sacred, and those of the smaller ones secular. These pictures have 
attracted the notice of Archxologists in former days. When I had 
the privilege of speaking on this subject at Burlington House, the 
learned Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries unearthed a minute 
in our books of the last century, from which it appears that the society 
paid a sum of money to Schneebelie, a well-known draughtsman of a 
former period, for making them copies of the Salisbury pictures. It 
does not appear, however, that the society ever got the pictures. 
Some traces of this colour can still be made out in both spots. In the porch 
they were much plainer before the recent ‘‘ restoration.” The principal door- 
way is said to have been called the blue door. 
VOL. XVII.—NO. L. K 
