05 Works, April 2nd, is Saints Margaret Clitherow's Day, With Footnotes - #90

Giovanni Battista Bertucci il Vecchio, active in Faenza circa 1495 - 1516

Saint Margaret

Oil on pine panel

81.7 x 50.8 cm.; 32¼ x 20 in.

Private collection

Giovanni Battista da Faenza, called Bertucci (the Monkey), who painted in the style of Perugino and Pinturicchio, flourished in the early part of the 16th century at Faenza. In the Pinacoteca of that city there are various works ascribed to him, of which the most remarkable is a Majesty, signed by him and bearing the date 1506. Crowe and Cavalcaselle also claim for Bertucci an Adoration of the Magi in the Berlin Gallery, there ascribed to Pinturicchio, and a Glorification of the Virgin in the National Gallery, given in the catalogue to Lo Spagna, who was a pupil of Perugino. More on Giovanni Battista da Faenza

Margaret Clitherow was born in 1556.  Her father was a respected businessman. He died when Margaret was fourteen. She married John Clitherow, a wealthy butcher and a chamberlain of the city, in 1571 and bore him three children. The family lived in The Shambles.

Daphne Pollen, 1904–1986

St Margaret kneels in this portrait of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, c.  1904-86

Commissioned for the 1970 canonization of the forty martyrs of England Wales

John Almond; Edmund Arrowsmith SJ; Ambrose Barlow; John Boste; Alexander Briant SJ; Edmund Campion SJ; Margaret Clitherow; Philip Evans SJ; Thomas Garnet SJ; Edmund Gennings; Richard Gwyn; John Houghton; Philip Howard; John Jones; John Kemble; Luke Kirby; Robert Lawrence; David Lewis SJ; Anne Line; John Lloyd; Cuthbert Mayne; Henry Morse SJ; Nicholas Owen SJ; John Payne; Polydore Plasden; John Plessington; Richard Reynolds; John Rigby; John Roberts; Alban Roe; Ralph Sherwin; John Southworth; Robert Southwell SJ; John Stone; John Wall; Henry Walpole SJ; Margaret Ward; Augustine Webster; Swithun Wells; Eustace White.

Daphne Pollen, 1904–1986, was born into a wealthy family.

Daphne attended the Slade School of Art, and developed a particular gift as a muralist. By 1923, aged only nineteen, she was working on an immensely ambitious work; a sixty-foot mural of ‘Christ Healing the Sick’ in the church of All Hallows, Poplar. The church was badly damaged in 1942 during the Blitz, and was demolished in 1952, so this work has been lost.

However, also in 1923, she went with her family to India to see Lutyens’ work at New Delhi, and found a fellow Slade alumnus was also travelling on the boat: Arthur Pollen. They fell in love, and in 1926, she married him, and converted to Catholicism. 

After her marriage, her practice as an artist declined as her domestic commitments increased, but such work as she did, like her husband’s, was focused on Christian themes, and Catholic church art in particular, though she was also a competent portraitist. ‘The Forty English Martyrs’ was painted in 1968. This was commissioned by the Society of Jesus at a time when Philip Caraman and John Walsh SJ were working towards the canonisation of the English martyrs.

The Pollens’ belief in the importance of religious art was transmitted to the next generation.  Both their sons, the architect Francis Pollen (he designed Worth Abbey in Sussex) and the stained-glass artist Patrick Pollen, worked regularly on religious subjects throughout their respective careers. More on Daphne Pollen 

She converted to Roman Catholicism in 1574. Although her husband belonged to the Established Church, he was supportive as his brother William was a Roman Catholic priest. He paid her fines for not attending church services. She was first imprisoned in 1577 for failing to attend church. Two more incarcerations at York Castle followed. Her third child, William, was born in prison.

Margaret risked her life by harbouring and maintaining priests, which was made a capital offence by the Jesuits, etc. Act 1584. Her home became one of the most important hiding places for fugitive priests in the north of England. Local tradition holds that she also housed her clerical guests in the Black Swan Inn at Peaseholme Green, where the Queen's agents were lodged.

In March 1586 the Clitherow house was searched. A frightened boy revealed the location of the priest hole.

Jacobus Neeffs (Neefs)

Margaret Clitherow (née Middleton), early to mid 17th century

Line engraving

11 1/8 in. x 7 1/2 in. (283 mm x 190 mm)

National Portrait Gallery, London

Jacob Neefs or Jacob Neeffs (Antwerp, 1610 – Antwerp, after 1660) was a Flemish etcher, engraver and publisher. He worked on publication projects for prominent Flemish artists of his time including Rubens, van Dyck and Jordaens.

Jacob Neefs was a pupil of Lucas Vorsterman the Elder. In 1632-3 he was admitted as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke of Antwerp. In March 1632 he became a member of the 'Sodaliteit van de Bejaerde Jongmans', a fraternity for bachelors established by the Jesuit order. He married Anne Antonissen on 5 February 1655. He is last mentioned in the registers of the Guild of Saint Luke in 1661. More on Jacob Neeffs

Margaret was arrested and called before the York assizes for the crime of harbouring Roman Catholic priests. She refused to plead, thereby preventing a trial that would entail her three children being made to testify, and being subjected to torture. Although pregnant with her fourth child, she was executed on Lady Day, 1586, by being crushed to death by her own door, the standard inducement to force a plea.

Margaret being executed

The two sergeants who should have carried out the execution hired four desperate beggars to do it instead. She was stripped and had a handkerchief tied across her face then laid across a sharp rock the size of a man's fist, the door from her own house was put on top of her and loaded with an immense weight of rocks and stones so that the sharp rock would break her back. Her death occurred within fifteen minutes, but her body was left for six hours before the weight was removed. More on Margaret Clitherow

Catholic Martyrs of the English Reformation

This painting in Ushaw College commemorates the Catholic Martyrs of the English Reformation. Among them, shown on the right panel, are the seminary priests of Douai College who were martyred between 1577 and 1680. Some 158 in total were killed by the State during that period for daring to minister to Catholics or harbour priests.

The tryptich is in St James' church, Spanish Place in London showing some of the martyrs who died for the Catholic faith from 1535 - 1680, and whose memory is kept collectively on 4 May. In the centre is the triple gallows known as the 'Tyburn Tree'.

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