Adam Easton and the Lutterworth Wall Paintings Revisited

In his monograph on Easton, Andrew Lee proposed that a previously unidentified contemporary portrait of the cardinal may be preserved in the form of an image added to an existing morality wall painting in the parish church of Lutterworth in Leicestershire. This proposal not only suggests the existence of a second representation of this important historical f igure, but makes this wall painting a public visual expression of the ongoing animosity between Easton and the reformer John Wyclif, the incumbent at Lutterworth. This chapter reviews the conservation history and uncovering of the painting, its probable dating, its visual conventions and its iconographic content. This examination of the evidence makes Lee’s suggestion untenable; however, careful examination of the image of the cardinal shows that it was most probably once part of a scene of the Mass of St Gregory, a late medieval devotional theme exemplifying the doctrine of Transubstantiation. The Lutterworth mural thus represents the trenchant restatement in Wyclif’s former parish of the orthodox position which Adam Easton so vigorously defended.