Video : St Albans Cathedral has announced the return of its cutting-edge Saints in Colour project.
The project sees its famous Wallingford Screen – described by the monks who first saw it as a mirror of the divine kingdom – transformed in glorious technicolour.
Saints in Colour is back at St Albans Cathedral
Last year the Cathedral worked in partnership with Hogarth, a WPP agency, to explore ground-breaking techniques for bringing history to life, using the latest technology from Panasonic and Epic Games.
Cutting-edge scanning and projection techniques using Reality Capture software brought the 15th-century screen and 19th-century statues into sharp focus with a millimetre-accurate 3D scan and re-colourisation. Their features were based on historical research by Dr James Alexander Cameron, with colours produced by artist Amara Por Dios to reflect the diversity of the world.
It was the first time the high altar screen had been brought back to colour since it was first created in 1359.
Precentor Jonathan Lloyd of St Albans Cathedral said:
“Many people come to St Albans Cathedral and are amazed by our medieval high altar screen, built in the 1480s and carefully restored 400 years later by the Victorian sculptor Harry Hems.
“Many people also wonder what it would have looked like when it was first made; covered in statues of the saints, decorated in rich, luminous colour, and described by the monks who saw it as “a mirror of the divine kingdom”.
“The Saints in Colour Project does exactly that. Using cutting-edge scanning, the latest software and a generous loan of high-end projectors, we have recreated what medieval monks might have seen via a 3D digital image, projected onto the stone of the high altar screen.
“As a Cathedral community we are really excited to share this project with you and we hope many people will come and experience this reimagining of our “mirror of the divine kingdom”, the Saints in Colour.”
Saints In Colour will be available to view daily for 10 minutes at 11am* (*not on Sundays) 2.15pm and 3.45pm until the end of November.
