Tomb - chest tomb, St. Patricksrock, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Tomb – chest tomb, St. Patricksrock, Co. Tipperary

Set into the north wall of the south chapel in the cathedral's north transept, on the Rock of Cashel, is a small stone slab that rewards closer attention precisely because it is easy to walk past.

Measuring roughly 0.8 metres by 0.59 metres, it is the end panel of a chest tomb, a type of raised box-like funerary monument common in late medieval Ireland, and it carries a carved Crucifixion scene worked in a style that scholars have described as crude and mannered, the product of a tradition in visible decline.

The carving depicts Christ on a cross whose arms terminate in enlarged rectangular ends, a distinctive formal choice. To either side stand the Virgin and St John, both dressed in pleated garments beneath the brat, the traditional Irish mantle, a large draped cloak worn over the head and clasped at the chest. The Virgin stands with hands clasped; St John raises his right hand to his face in what the art historian John Hunt, writing in 1974, called a stylised gesture of sorrow. Hunt connected the piece closely with the O'Tunney workshop, a family of stone carvers active in Kilkenny and Tipperary during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries whose output ranged from accomplished effigies to exactly this kind of late, formulaic work. The O'Tunneys were among the most prolific monumental sculptors in late medieval Ireland, and pieces attributed to their circle turn up across the region, varying considerably in quality. This slab sits at the less refined end of that spectrum, which is itself historically telling: it suggests either a journeyman hand within the workshop, a piece produced under pressure of time or cost, or simply the trailing edge of a long stylistic tradition running out of energy.

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