Art: Edward II, Head-On

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England's Edward II used to shock his court by an inordinate fondness for bathing and for an ambitious Gascon knight named Piers Gaveston. But after his wife, Isabella of France, got fed up and had Edward murdered in 1327, the hero worship of the populace triumphed over the sour recollections of the aristocrats who had known him. Although he has never been canonized, Edward II became (like his forerunner, Edward "the Confessor," no kin) a royal "saint."

Pilgrims who flocked to Edward II's tomb in St. Peter's Abbey (now Gloucester Cathedral) never got a good look at the King's recumbent, alabaster effigy; it lay too close under an elaborate canopy. Now, in the most recent issue of England's Architectural Review to reach the U.S., pilgrims and tourists could at last look at Edward face to face. "By kind permission of the Dean," the Architectural Review's photographer clambered up inside the canopy to photograph the curly-bearded King, headon.

The camera showed one of the earliest and greatest of European portrait sculptures. Supported by expressionless angels, King Edward's wide-browed, big-featured, somewhat ursine head was that of a proud, passionate man, inscrutably dreaming (see cut).