Below the monarch, nobility, and land-owning gentry in the highly stratified society of sixteenth-century England stood those known as the “middling sort.” Like their compatriots of higher rank, they too saw art and architecture as a means of self-fashioning.

This exhibition examines the emergence of distinctly middle-class taste in late medieval England by showcasing a rare set of large-scale domestic sculptures from Exeter. Commissioned by a merchant named Henry Hamlyn, the sculptures, which adorned the exterior of his house, feature stock characters drawn from popular prints and bawdy tales: a jester, a quarreling couple, peasants, and musicians. Rustic in style and subject matter, they fascinatingly came across as figures both amusing and menacing.