Entry: Emerging from the lime wash in the Beauchamp Chapel is a ghost angel from former times.
I'm quite a hardened church crawler, but I couldn't help but be moved at the sight of this ghost angel on the blind arcading in the Beauchamp Chapel in St. Mary's Warwick.
It's quite common for medieval paintings to be hidden behind a coat of limewash - often painted over during periods of iconoclasm - such as the Reformation or the English Civil War.
As the wash fades, more of the angel appears - I'm told that the eye came first some time ago.
There is something about the returning gaze that reaches beyond the painted surface. The angel is rooted in the fabric of this world and yet it opens a door into our imagination. Its slow emergence - perhaps over decades - asks us to take the long view, to recognise that what we can see now is not the whole story.
Against the instant judgements and passing glances of modern life, it offers a lesson in nuance and patience. Some things need time to become visible, and longer still to be understood. I find hope in those cracks and corners - in the thought that what seems lost might still be found.
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