Stop and Look: The Martyrdom of St Alban by Matthew Paris
This execution scene is rendered in cursive, energetic outlines, reinforced with bold colour.

Matthew Paris can claim to be among the first recorded English artists. He was born about the start of the thirteenth century and probably at an early age became a monk at the Benedictine Abbey of St Albans in Hertfordshire, north of London. In that prosperous monastic community, he was able to become both a historian and an accomplished draughtsman who drew his own maps and illustrated his own books.
These included histories of England and lives of holy men, one of which was a Life of St Alban, who is regarded as the first English saint. Paris developed a recognisable style, with the strengths of a natural illustrator: his designs sit handsomely on the page contributing to the overall beauty of a book that is obviously intended to be a visual delight as well as an enthralling read.
Alban was converted to Christianity in the late second century by a young priest named Amphibalus; his belief was unacceptable to the Roman governor of the city then named Verulamium, who had him executed, the first person to become a Christian martyr in England.
Dim and uncertain though so much of the history of the period remains, the details of Alban’s death are vividly relayed. The date was 22 June, AD 209. Matthew Paris probably got the story from an early fifth-century historian, St Germanus of Auxerre, and recounted it in a prose narrative with some 54 illustrations that are lively and vivid.
They present a series of matching scenes which flinch from no gruesome details as they present the story in terms of clearly depicted characters undergoing different emotions: here we have Alban’s distressed companion; the astonished onlookers; the executioner, whose eyes fall out, under a curse, as he delivers the fatal blow; and the saint’s soul, in the form of a dove, flying heavenwards as he dies. Alban’s severed head is caught in the branches of a tree which is the only detail drawn in an entirely stylised manner (and with some poetic licence, as contemporary accounts say that the severed head fell to the earth). The whole scene is rendered in cursive, energetic outlines reinforced with bold colour.
This idea of a narrative presented in conjunction with a set of illustrations interestingly foreshadows what was to happen centuries later, when printed books "illuminated" with engraved plates became a form of popular entertainment: we think of the novels of Dickens or Trollope with wood-engraved illustrations after drawings by well-known artists. This pioneering English saint is therefore treated in the pioneering artist Matthew Paris’s manuscript from the 1200s with a pioneering specimen of English book illustration.
An abbey was founded in Alban’s honour at Verulamium, and St Alban’s cathedral in its present form dates from the fourth century. Its current very large building was begun at the start of the tenth century, and became the centre of a new city named after the saint.