Tracing the Echoes of the Past: My Life in Medieval Art
By Dr. Felicity Gudgeon, University of Littlehampton
When people ask me what drew me to medieval art, I often say that I never quite grew out of the habit of staring too long at the margins of things. As a child, I would linger over the illuminated letters in the family Bible, more interested in the curling foliage and mischievous creatures than the words themselves. That early fascination with the overlooked and the ornamental set me on a path that has carried me from the cloisters of English abbeys to dusty archives in Paris and the hilltop monasteries of Catalonia.
My research focuses on the interplay between image and devotion in late medieval manuscript illumination. For me, these works are not simply beautiful artifacts, but living documents of belief, imagination, and human experience. A gilded miniature is both an object of prayer and a window into the mind of its maker—a balance between the sacred and the earthly. What still amazes me is the sheer inventiveness of artists who often remain anonymous: the rabbit jousting with a snail, the monk distracted by a songbird, the Virgin painted with a tenderness that transcends time.
At the University of Littlehampton, where I lecture in medieval art history, I try to encourage my students to think of art not as something frozen behind museum glass, but as part of a continuum of human expression. Medieval art was vibrant, tactile, and social: manuscripts passed through many hands; stained glass glowed in shifting sunlight; altarpieces witnessed both worship and everyday bustle. To study these works is to reconnect with the pulse of a world at once distant and startlingly familiar.
My career has taken me on some curious adventures. I have found myself climbing a rickety ladder in a Belgian church to examine a fragment of wall painting long hidden by plaster, and squinting under ultraviolet light at a page in Florence to glimpse erased brushstrokes. More recently, I have been collaborating with conservators and digital specialists on ways to virtually “restore” lost colours to manuscripts faded over centuries. The marriage of modern technology and medieval craftsmanship continues to surprise me, and it reminds me that the past is never entirely gone—it waits for us to look carefully enough.
Outside of academic work, I confess I remain a devoted margin-dweller. I collect peculiar medieval beasts in the form of postcards and always have a sketchbook at hand. There is, I think, a joy in following the same curiosity that led scribes to draw owls in monks’ hoods or cats chasing mice among the vines. It keeps the past playful, and in doing so, it keeps it alive.
In the end, my life’s work is not about preserving art in amber but about listening to its echoes—those small, insistent voices that whisper from vellum, stone, and glass. They remind us that the medieval world was never silent, and through them, we are invited to look a little longer at the margins of our own lives.