Epiphanius

Not a name you often hear these days - but a glorious one, and apt for today (Epiphany). Church crawlers will know it as that of one of the finest and most mysterious monumental sculptors of his time (a very few years after Shakespeare's), Epiphanius Evesham. Little is known of his life - not much more than this really - and his works are few and far between (and mostly attributed), but nearly all are of quite extraordinary quality, elegantly and truthfully done. (The picture shows a monument - attributed - in St Bartholomew, Quorn.) My old English master, whom I've mentioned many a time before, was mildly obsessed with the enigmatic figure of Evesham, and would make a special journey to an out-of-the-way church just to see one of his works, however uncertainly attributed. A writer in the Peter Ackroyd line could probably make something of the Evesham mystery; the title's ready-made - Epiphanius.