Browse Exhibits (8 total)

This exhibition looks at Edwin Rae's contribution to the study of Irish tomb sculpture by highlighting the many images of Irish late medieval tombs in his image collection.

In this exhibition animated word nodes illustrate the links between patrons, masons and Gothic architecture and sculpture in medieval Ireland.

These were created by isolating set metadata terms in the Rae Collection to see how monuments with these key terms are interconnected by metadata, these terms were "Piers Butler, Margaret FitzGerald, Ormond and O'Tunney". They occur often in the Rae collection because one of Rae’s major research areas were a large number of late medieval tombs in Kilkenny and Tipperary. His work on the tombs is contained in two articles published in 1970 and 71. 

As a result of his study Rae arranged to tombs to fit in with the ouvres of two sculptural workshops, the Ormond school and the O’Tunney atelier, with an article detailing the output of each. This division has defined the subject for succeeding generations of scholars. 

Recurring words in the Rae collection are th Earl of Ormond, and then the patrons of different tombs created by the O’Tunney workshop. I suggest that the tombs so carefully documented in Rae’s images are the permanent and overt expression of the Earl of Ormond’s social network in early sixteenth-century Kilkenny ... read on to hear why. 

The first images in this exhibit are of the font that was stolen from the Church of St. Lawrence, Rathmore on May 14, 2013 and returned two days later following widespread media coverage of the theft.

The subsequent images show the tomb of Sir Thomas Plunket and Marion Cruise.

See our NEWS section for more information on the theft of the font.

This exhibit is designed to showcase the the different styles of medieval architectre that can be found in medieval Ireland.