ABSTRACT
The artistic standing of medieval Coventry has received little consideration, in spite of the presence of the striking scheme of 15th-century paintings in the Charterhouse. However, the programme of conservation, which has made the Doom in Holy Trinity church accessible again, and the discovery of fragments of a later 14th-century Apocalypse cycle from the chapter-house of Coventry Priory present an opportunity for reassessment. Both schemes suggest a considerable level of artistic sophistication in the city. The Holy Trinity Doom demonstrates the persistence in Coventry of a robust form of the International Gothic Style associated with its most famous artistic son, the glazier John Thornton. The chapter-house fragments suggest a technically and icon-ographically complex rendering of the Book of Revelation, pre-dating the comparable cycle at Westminster and surpassing it in quality. These paintings of c. 1360–70 are witness to a desire to emulate continental models in the generation before John Thornton. Both schemes suggest the context in which the Last Judgement, the climactic scene in the famous Coventry cycle plays, may have been presented and understood. Above all, they confirm the status of late medieval Coventry as a centre of artistic ambition and stylistic innovation.
