Stained Glass Scene: Life of Thomas Becket

About this Glass:

This is a British stained-glass scene from the Life of Thomas Becket around the time 1190-1205 in Europe from the Canterbury Cathedral. This object has many historical and religious meanings. This panel originally used to be part of a space that depicted Thomas Becket’s life and the miracles that he performed in a devotional area in the Trinity Chapel. Therefore, it used to tell a story along with other stained glass panels about the life of Thomas Becket. Furthermore, stained glass during the Middle Ages allowed light to shine through into the church and thus illuminated and told Christian stories in a way that was highly influential and appreciated during this time (boston globe, HAM).

By displaying it as an individual fragment in a museum, it is away from all the cultural and historical background that individuals used to associate with it in the Cathedral, and now is just a panel of stained glass of a single scene in Thomas Becket’s life. In the Cathedral, it would always be associated with another scene of his life surrounding it, but as just a panel in a museum, it removes viewers from the religious context that it used to have and from the beauty that it used to be part of when it illuminated in the sun.

This object is an example of how many objects, especially those in the museum, are stripped away from their historical context and are often viewed independently. We thus imagine these as separate and different from the original context, since they is now just one of many art pieces on a museum wall.