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This is a comparatively soft, crystalline stone varying in colour from white to pale yellow. It was used in Assyria both for small vessels and for large reliefs, but it is generally associated with its wide use in medieval Europe for monuments and retables. The employment of alabaster for these purposes originated in England during the second quarter of the 14th century.
After the Black Death its popularity increased and it set the fashion for all other trades in religious and monumental sculpture. The chief centre of the alabaster trade in Europe was Nottingham and from there tombs and retables were exported in great numbers to all parts of the Continent. An enormous number of figures and panels grouped in wooden frames to form retables are to be found all over Europe, as far away as Iceland and southern Italy, and it is only comparatively recently that their English origin has been traced.
No alabaster retable remains in its original position in England, but fine complete specimens in their original settings survive in France, Germany and Italy; one of the best is at Yssac-la-Tourette in France. For these retables the panels were grouped in sets of suitable subjects. Thus the Annunciation, Nativity, Magi, Circumcision and Coronation of the Virgin with a central panel of the Assumption would make one set, while a central panel of the Crucifixion would be flanked by scenes of the Passion and the Resurrection to constitute another set. These were the two commonest scenes.
Retables dating from after the close of the 14th century are coarser in handling and mannered in treatment; and in the latest examples, dating from the end of the 15th century, the workmanship is careless. The whole nature of the trade at that time is shown by the record of an action brought in 1491 by Nicholas Hill, an imagemaker, against his salesman for the value of 58 heads of St John the Baptist.
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