ART OF SCULPTURE IN ENGLAND. 203

as ill a flood, permission to carry out of the realm tlirec great alabaster images, representing the Virgin ^lary, St. Peter, and St. Paul, and a small image of the Holy Trinity, without any payment of duties for them ^ The license included a large quantity of household utensils, tapestries for ])resentation to the pope, cloths and garments of English manufacture. The statue of gilt brass, representing Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, who died A.D. 1439, in the chapel foiuuled by him, at AVarwick, is another fine specimen of the fifteenth century^. The name of the artists, Bartholomew Lambespring andWilliam Austen, employed on this work, have been recorded. There exist many other works of great merit, which the limits of this paper will not allow me to notice. I now approach the last period of medieval art in England, in which the florid style of architecture, then adopted, de- manded all the powers of the artist, and of the sculptor more especially, to contribute to the exuberance of embellishment displayed at that time in religious ediflces. We owe the most splendid monument of that period, in England, the Chapel of Henry VII., rather to the fears of that prince, than to his taste or feeling towards the Arts. Happily that edifice was projected at a moment, the most favourable to the development of genius ; England, speaking generally, had, it is true, profited little by the extraordinary revolution in Art, then progressing towards maturity under the auspices of the jMedici, and other princes of Italy, Ijy the efforts of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo, yet the vast increase of artists of every description, encou- raged by more extensive employment for their skill, had occasioned emigrations to Germany and the north of Europe ; and we may reasonably suppose that many, at the })eriod of the construction of Henry the Seventh's chapel, had found employment in England, and become associated with our own artists. The Flemish artists, in one class of workmanship, at this period, during the times of Pius HI. and Julius II., equalled, if they did not sm-})ass the Italians, in the execution of dies, for striking medals, or of matrices of seals. Mr. Britton, to whom we are, perhaps, more indebted for archaeological information, than to any person in this kingdom, ' llymer, F(l'(1., vii. p. 357 ; o Hie. II., strikini^ cffijiy given by Charles Stotliard, 1382. and ^Ir. Rlore. Tiie contracts for the

• -' Sec the accurate representations of tills tomb arc given by Duirdalc.