Befanged, Vicious Soul

The heads of both families must have agreed to the unusual arrangements of 1480—Thomas Etchingham II (Elizabeth’s brother) accepting the burial of an Oxenbridge woman in his family church, and Robert Oxenbridge III allowing his sister to lie away from their family vault. But it is unlikely that either brother instigated this unusual commemoration; instead, Agnes Oxenbridge herself probably requested it, as was then the custom, in a deathbed will that no longer survives. Of course, Agnes Oxenbridge’s instructions could have been ignored, modified, or poorly implemented, so the actual execution of the Etchingham-Oxenbridge monument relied on a collaboration involving the man in whose church it was to be laid (Thomas Etchingham II), her survivors (especially Robert Oxenbridge III), and the London workshop that got the commission (denoted as workshop F by students of brass styles). As a product of so much collective effort, this memorial brass to two women must have been a scandal to no one at the time.

It nevertheless presented some creative challenges. First, the designers had to determine how to place the two effigies, given that most joint monuments commemorated married couples. Elizabeth Etchingham was assigned the conventional spot for husbands (the left, as viewed by observers), perhaps because the brass was destined for her family church, because her family was of more ancient origin, or because her smaller effigy presented less insult to husbandly prerogatives. Second, the designers had to distinguish a young, nubile maiden from her middle-aged counterpart. They used hairstyle and height to this end, differentiating the smaller maiden with youthful f lowing hair from her larger, coifed, and middle-aged companion.

Third, the designers had to express the relationship that caused these two women to be remembered together, and their decisions here are especially revealing. The design suggests that no one—not Agnes Oxenbridge in pre-mortem requests, not Thomas Etchingham II and Robert Oxenbridge III acting on her behalf, and not the artisans in the workshop—shied away from representing the two women as an intimate couple. Indeed, the monument seems to have been designed with special emphasis on their warm affection. This affection was suggested, of course, by the simple fact of their joint brass, for most brasses with multiple figures remembered married persons—a motif generally understood as celebrating the closeness and fidelity of marriage. But the designers of this brass pushed beyond mere joint commemoration in stressing intimacy, for Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge were also deliberately shown facing each other, moving towards each other, and looking directly into each other’s eyes.

Most contemporary joint effigies showed couples facing the front, much like bodies laid in tombs, but Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge were portrayed in semi-profile, turned towards each other. New and not yet standard, this pose derives partly from design developments extraneous to the specifics of this 1480 monument—particularly the patterns favored by workshop F and a desire to show in effigies the complex headdresses of the time. But the pose had an affective purpose too, for as Paul Binski has noted of other brasses, “the turning of figures on their axis enabled the intimacy of marriage to be expressed.” The designers of the Etchingham-Oxenbridge brass evoked intimacy by adopting this inward turn, and they emphasized it even more by eschewing two features common in other brasses of workshop F—a so-called “jaunty” leaning of the figures away from each other and a draping of women’s gowns in deep, immobilizing folds. 

The effigies of Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge lack these distancing features and show, instead, the two women moving towards one another. As if to seal the affective power of the composition, the designers show Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge gazing directly into each other’s eyes, even though most married couples in contemporary brasses stare past each other into the distance. Their brass unmistakably evokes more intimacy and mutual affection than do most contemporary monuments of husbands and wives."