Spandrel: Salmon, Boaz and Obed

Everyone in this family is watching the same thing, the mother's work. She is cutting a length of cloth, held up for her by the child and by a hand that may be hers or her husband's. They seem to sit in front of the corner of a building, and the light picks each of them out according to how near they are to us. The mother's legs, under a brilliant yellow cloak, go almost white where the light strikes her knees, while the husband, in a violet cap and a dark green mantle, barely surfaces from the shadow.

This is the triangular cell of the vault above the lunette of Salmon, Boaz and Obed. Down there the usual reading finds Boaz with Ruth and their son Obed, so this group should be the family of Salmon, the father of Boaz in Matthew's list, perhaps shown as the child between his parents. No name is written up here. It was painted in the second campaign. Above it two bronze-coloured nudes cling to the frame with their backs to us, as if climbing up to peer at the ram's skull between them.