ON AN ALABASTER SCULPTURE. 83 



of these sculptures. It has been taken for (i) the head of St. 

 John Baptist, (2) the Vernicle, (3) the image of our Lord's face, 

 given to Abgarus after the siege of Edessa, and (4) the first 

 person of the Holy Trinity. 



Only a word or two are necessary with regard to the last of 

 these suppositions, although it is upheld at much length, and 

 with considerable misapplied learning, by the late Rev. E. Duke, 

 in the Gentleman's Magazine. His contention was that the 

 central head personified God the Father, the figure out of the 

 tomb (or the lamb) below God the Son, and the small child-like 

 figure above God the Spirit. Some strange and extravagant 

 propositions, both theological and antiquarian, are adduced in 

 support of this contention, but the whole theory is at once upset, 

 when it is noted that in Nos. I., II., and VI. of the above list of 

 these sculptures there is no upper figure whatever, so that a 

 Trinity conjecture is an impossibility. 



The theory that the head represents the decapitated head of St. 

 John Baptist in a charger was originally propounded by Mr. 

 Nicholls, in his History of Leicestershire, and asserted in the 

 following concise and positive terms : — "The middle figure is the 

 head of St. John the Baptist." Equally positive is the assertion 

 in a far later publication, the Archceological Journal, where the 

 engraving is lettered to correspond with the brief statement in 

 the text. Almost the only argument that seems to tell in favour 

 of this theory is the description, in a testamentary inventory of 

 one Agas Herte, of Bury St. Edmunds, who died in 1522, of an 

 object that apparently corresponds with these sculptures — " Seynt 

 Joh' is hede of alabaster with Seynt Peter and Seynt Thomas and 

 the fygur of Cryst." * But before the Reformation, as well as 

 after it, inventories abound in blunders when dealing with art, 

 almost as strange as the catalogues of the modern provincial 

 auctioneer. In the last volume of one journal, a similar blunder 

 was brought to light. An inventory of the church goods of 

 Hartshorn, taken in 161 2, mentions "a plate of Silver having 



* Bury Wills and Inventories, Camden Society, pp. 115, 255. 



