"Purtreture" and "Holsom Stories": John Lydgate's Accommodation of Image and Text in Three Religious Lyrics

John Lydgate’s interest in the visual arts is apparent both in his frequent references to painting and illumination and in those poems he composed to accompany paintings or other visual arts. The latter poems are more than simply narrative or descriptive; Lydgate shows a definite appreciation for the potential effectiveness of visual images. In poems such as “On The Image of Pity,” “The Dolerous Pyte of Crystes Passioun,” and “Cristes Passioun,” Lydgate increases or curtails the complexity of the poetic description and decoration, according to the purpose of the particular work of art. In a strictly meditative lyric, for example, he combines visual images and text to create a focus for meditation that impresses itself on the memory and surpasses the impact of either medium on its own.