Dominican Painting in East Anglia: The Thornham Parva Retable and the Musee de Cluny Frontal

(East Anglian) The 14th-century panel painting discovered in 1927 in a stable at Thornham Hall in Suffolk was one of the most remarkable finds this century in the field of medieval English painting. This detailed study of the retable, now in the church at Thornham Parva, and an unprovenanced panel painting in the Museé de Cluny, proves that they are the table and frontal of the same altar —the only such survival anywhere in north-west Europe. Further analysis of the iconography and style of the panels shows that they are East Anglian works datable to the second quarter of the 14th century.