The Wilton Diptych: a gift from Tolkien to the Convent of Santa Colette in Assisi
The Wilton Diptych: a gift from Tolkien to the Convent of Santa Colette in Assisi
Oronzo Cilli
For a research project focused on the relationship between Tolkien and Italy, which has occupied much of my time in recent months, I returned to Assisi—a city where the Professor, accompanied by his daughter Priscilla, stayed from 6 to 13 August 1955.
Throughout that week, Tolkien and his daughter lodged at the Monastery of Saint Colette, home to the French Poor Clares, located at Via Borgo San Pietro 3 in Assisi. The convent exceptionally welcomed English-speaking pilgrims only between 1954 and 1956; during all other periods, guests were exclusively French-speaking. The decision to host Anglophones stemmed from the sharp decline in French pilgrims during the immediate post-war years, which prompted the convent to open its doors to requests from England, where suitable accommodation for pilgrims was lacking.
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| On the left, the building where Tolkien stayedin room number 15 (bottom left, with the window from which he looked out over the Umbrian landscape). |
As mentioned, I returned to Assisi to revisit the places Tolkien explored, including the Convent of the Sisters of Saint Colette, as part of my ongoing study. We know of Tolkien’s stay in Assisi thanks to the journal he kept during the holiday—titled Giornale d’Italia—as well as from the direct testimony of Priscilla Tolkien, shared with me over the course of a long correspondence between 2004 and 2022.
In the journal, published in the Chronology by Scull and Hammond, Tolkien describes how he and his daughter were housed in a large, rather bare room in what appears to have been a kind of farmhouse set in the gardens and grounds of the convent. From their window, they enjoyed a broad view of the plain below, with hills and distant mountains. However, there were holes in the mesh behind the window, such that the room seemed to stand above a chicken run or a large pile of cages for doves and rabbits—and the flies were pestilential. Today, this is no longer the case. The convent, still open to pilgrims who wish to stay in Assisi, has preserved the same layout as Tolkien would have seen it in 1955, though the interiors have since been fully renovated and made welcoming.
Thanks to the sisters of the convent, I learned that Tolkien and his daughter Priscilla stayed in the part of the building overlooking the large garden, specifically in Room 15. The windows of this room open onto the hills and mountains—just as Tolkien described them.
The most remarkable discovery during this visit, however, was learning from my guide at the convent that Tolkien, upon his departure, gifted the sisters with a framed reproduction taken from the Wilton Diptych. The image still hangs today on the wall of the room he occupied and is visible to anyone staying in that room. I must admit, it was a deeply moving and unexpected moment to see it in person, thanks to special permission granted to me.
The front of the image displays one of the four scenes from the celebrated work: the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child surrounded by eleven angels, with the dominant hues of lapis lazuli blue in their garments and wing feathers. The background is a golden sky above a meadow adorned with delicate flowers, symbolizing the Garden of Paradise. One can make out peach-colored roses, originally white, symbolizing Mary’s purity, and pink ones, once red, signifying the blood of Christ shed in martyrdom. The reverse of the image is plain white, bearing no inscription or dedication.
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| The reproduction of the Wilton Diptych, gifted by Tolkien to the convent, is still there today, framed, in room number 15. |
The Wilton Diptych
A true masterpiece of late medieval English painting, the Wilton Diptych was created around 1395, most likely for King Richard II of England. It is currently housed in the National Gallery in London, having formerly belonged to the private collection of Wilton House, where it remained for centuries.
The artwork consists of two oak panels, hinged together and painted on both sides — a typical example of a portable diptych intended for private devotion. Each panel measures approximately 39.5 × 29.5 cm. When open, the diptych forms a single, coherent composition across both panels; when closed, it takes the form of a small book. Executed in tempera and gold on a prepared ground, the work reflects the artistic style of late 14th-century English and French sacred art.
Open at the front, it features a depiction of Richard II kneeling in prayer, splendidly dressed in a golden robe decorated with the symbol of the rosemary plant (the emblem of his queen, Anne of Bohemia). The king ispresented to the Virgin by three patron saints of England: St. Edward the Confessor, bearing his miraculous ring; St. Edmund the Martyr, with the arrow of his martyrdom and the royal standard; and St. John the Baptist, shown with the symbolic lamb.
On the right panel — the one reproduced in the copy donated by Tolkien to the Convent of Assisi — the Virgin Mary is shown seated with the Christ Child on her lap. She is surrounded by eleven angels clothed in blue and decorated with golden stars, echoing the royal heraldic colours. The Child raises His hand in blessing toward Richard, symbolizing the divine legitimization of the king’s authority. Around the king’s neck is a brooch bearing the emblem of the white hart crowned, his personal badge, which is also worn by one of the angels — a sign of the spiritual bond between the sovereign and the heavenly realm.
The reverse sides of the panels are also carefully painted: on the right is a crowned white hart with a gold chain around its neck — Richard’s personal symbol — and on the left, Richard II's complete heraldic achievement of a shield with the attributed arms of the Confessor impaling France ancient quartering England above which two lions support a helmet with the crest of England (as it then was) of a lion statant on a cap of maintenance. [*]
For an English Catholic, the Wilton Diptych holds significance far beyond its artistic or historical value. It represents one of the last great visual testimonies of Catholic faith in pre-Reformation England. In an era when monarchy and religion were deeply intertwined, the diptych stands as a powerful and moving image of the king’s personal devotion to the Virgin Mary and the nation’s patron saints — a visible sign of the lost spiritual heritage of medieval England.
Tolkien’s Possible Interest
The first question I asked myself was: what did that image mean to Tolkien — enough for him to donate it to the convent of the Collatine Sisters in Assisi? I considered possible answers and connections.
For a devout English Catholic like Tolkien, the Wilton Diptych represents a window into a forgotten past — a time when Catholicism was deeply embedded in the public and spiritual life of England, long before the upheavals of the Reformation. This work speaks to the heart of English Catholics, evoking the deep roots of their faith, the beauty of sacred art, the central role of prayer, and the protective presence of saints. It recalls an England in which Catholicism was not merely a religion, but a shared national and spiritual identity. The saints depicted — Edward the Confessor, Edmund the Martyr, and John the Baptist — were venerated as guardians of the realm. The Christ Child’s blessing of the kneeling king expresses a sacred vision of kingship deeply rooted in Catholic tradition.
The central scene — the one Tolkien chose to gift — shows the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child, with King Richard II kneeling before her. This deeply devotional image places Mary, the most venerated figure in Catholicism, at the heart of the king’s supplication. The nude Christ Child, “animatedly turned toward the kneeling king, almost as if speaking to him” (Scharf 34), is surrounded by eleven angels dressed in blue, wearing rose garlands and bearing the White Hart badge — Richard’s personal emblem — on their left shoulders. The angels, depicted with youthful, somewhat feminine features and multi-colored wings, are far from decorative. “The Madonna’s monumental figure is flanked by two kneeling angels, each touching her robe with one hand, as if urging her forward, while pointing to the king with the other, as if commending him to her favor” (Ibid. 49). These are celestial intercessors, presenting the king’s petitions to Mary and, through her, to Christ.
Tolkien’s decision to donate this image to a Franciscan convent may also reflect the painting’s strong connections to French culture in the late 14th century. The broom-cod collar worn by Richard and the angels was originally a badge of the French royal house, later adopted by English kings as a sign of homage. In 1393, King Charles VI of France sent four such collars to Richard II and his uncles. Even Henry IV, Richard’s rival and successor, wore one during his coronation procession, as recorded by Froissart (Ibid. 40). This convergence of symbols suggests a dense network of cultural and political exchanges between France and England, also visible in the painting’s religious and iconographic elements. Richard himself was born in Bordeaux, in French territory, and the diptych was created during the Western Schism (1378), when England supported Pope Urban VI, while France backed the Avignon antipope Clement VII. Within this context, the red cross flag, indicated by the Christ Child, may refer to a crusade promoted by the Roman Pope against his French-supported rival. Its presence in the sacred scene may thus serve to justify the king’s intent to lead or support such an expedition.
Another Curious Connection
England is famously known as the Dowry of Mary, a land especially dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and under her patronage. This title dates back to the mid-14th century and was solemnly rededicated on March 29, 2020. The earliest known references to this designation may stem from medieval wall paintings discovered between the 18th and 19th centuries in the Palace of Westminster, prior to their destruction in the great fire of 1834. These paintings depicted Edward III (1312–1377) and his consort Philippa of Hainault (1313–1369) offering England to the Virgin Mary.
It was Richard II (1367–1400), grandson of Edward III, who formally consecrated England to the Virgin during a ceremony at Westminster Abbey around the feast of Corpus Christi in 1381. This act came shortly after the Peasants’ Revolt, when Mary was seen as a powerful protector who had preserved both king and kingdom in a time of crisis.
Intriguingly, a panel painting once existed at the English Hospice of St Thomas of Canterbury in Rome—now known as the Venerable English College, the very seminary where Tolkien’s eldest son, John Francis Reuel Tolkien, trained for the priesthood between 1939 and 1946. The painting, now lost, was a five-panel tabula (a pentaptych approximately 150 x 90 cm) that stood on the altar of St Edmund. Fortunately, several descriptions of it survive, including one from an anti-Catholic tract written during the reign of James I (MS Harley 360, British Library), and another from the Jesuit Silvestro da Pietrasanta (1590–1647) in his Tesserae Gentilitiae (Rome, 1638).
At the center of the tabula stood the Virgin Mary; to her left, a kneeling Richard II, crowned and offering “the globe or pattern of England” with the inscription:
Dos tua Virgo pia haec est, quare rege, Maria
(“Thy Dowry this, O Virgin sweet, keep it and rule it, as is meet”).
The royal sceptre rested on a cushion, and behind the king stood St George in armor, leaning forward with his right hand placed on Richard’s back. The king’s consort, Anne of Bohemia (1366–1394), also appeared kneeling, clad in a golden cope adorned with eagles. Other saints were depicted on the side panels. The royal couple were shown offering the island of Britain to the Blessed Virgin, with St John the Baptist witnessing the scene.
Although painted after the Wilton Diptych, the tabula must have been completed before Queen Anne’s death in 1394.
The Wilton Diptych and Tolkien
In none of Tolkien’s known writings do we find direct references to the Wilton Diptych or to King Richard II. The only mention of the king—if it can be called that—appears in A Middle English Vocabulary, the glossary compiled by Tolkien for Kenneth Sisam’s Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose. Tolkien notes:
Richard, þe secunde Kyng, King Richard II, XIII b32. (Tolkien 167)
The reference is to a passage in Sisam’s book, specifically from “XIII. John of Trevisa’s Translation of Higden’s Polychronicon. The Languages of Britain,” which reads:
“This manner (of teaching) was much used before the first pestilence, and since then has been somewhat changed. For John of Cornwall, a master of grammar, changed the instruction in grammar school and the construction (i.e., translation) of French into English; and Richard Pencrych learned that method of teaching from him, and others from Pencrych, so that now, in the year of our Lord 1385, in the ninth year of the second King Richard after the Conquest, in all the grammar schools of England children abandon French, and translate and learn in English, and thereby have advantage in one respect, and disadvantage in another.” (Sisam 149)
The method referred to is the transformation of grammatical instruction in late 14th-century English schools—specifically, the shift from French to English as the language of teaching in grammar schools.
Interestingly, one of the Inklings, Gervase Mathew, wrote The Court of Richard II in 1968. In its preface, Mathew thanks Tolkien, and in a note on Sir Thopas, he writes: “I was indebted for this suggestion to Professor Tolkien.” Mathew was a Dominican friar, philosopher, historian, and scholar of Byzantine art—widely respected for his learning and academic contributions. His book devotes several pages to the Wilton Diptych, which would no doubt have caught Tolkien’s interest.
Additionally, Stratford Caldecott, in discussing the female characters created by Tolkien, also refers to the Wilton Diptych. After introducing it, he writes:
“This is the Mary who is ever-present to Tolkien, at the center of his imagination, mantled by ail natural beauty, the most perfect of God’s creatures, the treasury of all earthly and spiritual gifts. What Elbereth, Galadriel, and other characters such as Lúthien and Arwen, surely express is precisely what Tolkien said he had found in Mary: beauty both in majesty and simplicity. Majesty, for here we see beauty crowned with ail, the honors that chivalry can bestow; and as for simplicity, well, what is more simple than starlight?” (Caldecott 61)
Another passage on the connections between Tolkien, Richard II, and the Wilton Diptych can be found in The Lost Chaucer by John Bowers:
“Offering reflections on ‘martial glory and true glory’ from his inception as a character (Letters, 79), Faramir’s condemnations found steady parallels at Richard II’s court. The Men of Númenor grew enamoured of the black arts; Richard II was accused of occult practices and kept a book of geomancy in his personal library. Gondor’s kings made tombs more splendid than the houses of the living; Richard II invested lavishly in royal tombs in Westminster Abbey. Gondor’s kings counted the old names of their ancestors more dearly than their sons; Richard II installed a genealogical series of statues from Edward the Confessor to himself in Westminster Hall. Childless men sat musing on heraldry; the childless Richard II had an obsession with heraldry, affixing his insignia of the White Hart wherever possible, most famously on the back of the Wilton Diptych. Old Númenorean scholars asked questions of the stars; Richard II’s mania for astrology prompted Chaucer to write his Treatise on the Astrolabe commending ‘the king that is lord of this langage’. The last king of Anárion’s line left no heir; Richard II had no children with Queen Anne and therefore left no heir when deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke.” (Bowers 138)
The Wilton Diptych and Another Member of the Inklings: C. S. Lewis
In addition to Gervase Mathew, the Wilton Diptych also captured the attention of C. S. Lewis, who received a reproduction of the painting as a gift from Jill Flewett. Jill was something of a domestic "guardian angel" and a central figure in the lives of Lewis and his family. She is even said to have inspired the character of Lucy Pevensie, the beloved heroine of The Chronicles of Narnia.
Born in 1927, Jill was the daughter of Henry Walter Flewett, a Senior Classics Master, and Winifred “Freda” Johnson Flewett. Raised in the Roman Catholic faith, she was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in London. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Jill and her two sisters were evacuated to Oxford for safety. In September 1942, she interviewed with Janie King Moore (affectionately known as “Minto” or “Mrs. Moore” in Lewis’s correspondence) for a place at The Kilns, Lewis’s home. The initial arrangement, meant to last just a fortnight, turned into a stay of two years.
During those war-torn years, Jill’s help at The Kilns became indispensable—especially when Fred Paxford, the family gardener, was drafted into munitions work. Jill stepped in to care for the household’s 25 hens, 3 rabbits, and expansive vegetable garden. Later, Jill married Clement Freud, the grandson of the famous neurologist, and went on to have a brilliant career as an actress and theatre impresario.
Lewis thanked Jill for the gift in a letter dated 15 June 1950, in which he wrote:
“I love my diptych more every day. It is in my bedroom, facing me as I wake. Funny they shd. make St. John Baptist grown up when Our Lord is a baby, when they were really almost the same age. But oh the blue & the gold!”
Lewis treasured this gift all his life, and had it with him in Magdalene College, Cambridge, during his years there (Schakel 143).
[*] I would like to thank Harm Schelhaas for the description.
Postscript
I have visited Assisi many times, and beyond the great joy of retracing the steps once taken by Tolkien and his daughter Priscilla, I have a deep personal bond with the city of St Francis through my friendship with Father Guglielmo Spirito, OFM. Father Spirito—whom I deeply admire and esteem—not only is a renowned theologian and scholar of Tolkien, but also maintained a correspondence with Priscilla Tolkien from 1995 to 2022. In 2017, he hosted and accompanied her during her visit to Assisi—62 years after her first visit there with her father.
It was Father Spirito who, in 2020, gave me a truly wonderful gift, made possible also thanks to the generosity of the Sisters of St Colette in Assisi: a copy of Everybody’s Saint Francis (1912) by Maurice F. Egan, beautifully illustrated by the great French artist M. Boutet de Monvel. The book comes from the library of the Monastery of St Colette in Assisi and contains, in addition to the monastery’s ex libris, the autograph of Boutet de Monvel himself and five postcards depicting the monastery and the city of Assisi in the 1950s—the time of Tolkien’s own visit.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOWERS, John. An introduction to the Gawain poet. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012.
—. Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer. London: Oxford University Press, 2019.
CALDECOTT, Stratford. Secret Fire: The Spiritual Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien. London: Darton Longman & Todd, 2008
CILLI, Oronzo. Tolkien e l’Italia. Rimini: Il Cerchio, 2016.
GERVASE, Matthew. The court of Richard II. London: Murray, 1968.
LEWIS, Clive Staples. The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950–1963. Edited by Walter Hooper. London: HarperCollins, 2006.
SCHAKEL, Peter J. Imagination and the Arts in C.S. Lewis: Journeying to Narnia and Other Worlds. Columbia/London: University of Missouri Press, 2011.
SCHARF, George Sir. Description of the Wilton House Diptych: containing a contemporary portrait of King Richard the Second. London: Printed for the Arundel Society for Promoting the Knowledge of Art, 1882.
SCULL, Christina & HAMMOND, Wayne G. The J. R. R. Tolkien companion & guide, vol. I Chronology. London: HarperCollins, 2017.
SISAM, Kenneth. Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1921.
TOLKIEN, J. R. R. A Middle English Vocabulary. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1922.