Graham Sutherland's fabric Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph, completed in 1962 for the new Coventry Cathedral, is the largest fabric in the world at 23 meters high and 12 meters wide, and represents the most ambitious integration of biblical iconography into a 20th-century British building. Its placement in Basil Spence's rebuilt cathedral - constructed alongside the bombed-out shell of the medieval original - makes it inseparable from its context of destruction, resurrection, and British post-war identity.
Biblical Sources
The iconographic program draws on the visionary literature of Ezekiel and Revelation. Ezekiel 1:10 describes the four living creatures surrounding the divine throne - a face like a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle - and Revelation 4:7 repeats the image in the heavenly throne room. These four figures (the Tetramorph) became in early Christian tradition the symbols of the four Evangelists: man for Matthew, lion for Mark, ox for Luke, eagle for John. Sutherland's enthroned Christ is surrounded by these four creatures in a composition that consciously revives the great medieval Christ-in-Majesty tradition - the Maiestas Domini found on the tympana of Romanesque cathedrals and in the apse mosaics of Byzantine churches. Below Christ's feet, between his legs, hangs a small, naked, suffering human figure before a cross - an image of the Crucifixion placed within the Glory, so that triumph and suffering are seen together.
The Composition
The fabric dominates the interior of Spence's cathedral, visible through the great glass screen at the west end. The enthroned Christ is green-robed in a golden mandorla, his hands raised in blessing. The four creatures frame him: the winged man above, the lion and ox to the sides, the eagle below. At Christ's feet is the small crucified figure - a decision that sparked debate, since it gives the fabric both an eschatological and a redemptive reading simultaneously. The color palette moves from gold and greens at center to deep blue and purple at the borders.
The Artist
Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) was one of the most significant British artists of the 20th century, known primarily as a painter of organic, often threatening forms derived from natural observation - thorns, roots, landscape. He had made an earlier Crucifixion for St Matthew's, Northampton in 1946 (for which Henry Moore had made the Madonna and Child for the same church). His appointment to design the Coventry fabric was controversial among those who expected a more conventionally figurative treatment. Sutherland's collaboration with weavers at Pinton Frères in Felletin, France, occupied eight years.
The Cathedral Context
Coventry Cathedral was destroyed by German bombing on the night of November 14-15, 1940, in one of the most devastating air raids on any British city. The decision to rebuild rather than simply memorialize the ruin was itself a theological act, and Basil Spence's winning 1951 design placed the new building immediately alongside the preserved ruins so that the two could be seen together: destruction and rebuilding, death and resurrection. The new cathedral was consecrated on May 25, 1962, the same day Britten's War Requiem - commissioned for the occasion - received its premiere inside it. The fabric was the visual and spiritual centerpiece of the building.
Theological Significance
The combination of Christ in Glory with the small suffering figure below is a sophisticated theological statement: the enthroned Lord who will judge the living and the dead (as in the Nicene Creed) is also the one who was crucified. The glory does not cancel the suffering but contains and transforms it. This is the Easter theology of the New Testament - the risen Christ still bears his wounds (John 20:27) - translated into the largest woven image in the world.
Legacy
The Coventry fabric became an emblem of post-war British sacred art and the cathedral itself a symbol of reconciliation, hosting repeated ceremonies of international reconciliation between Britain and Germany. The fabric's scale and ambition set a standard for 20th-century liturgical art that has never been equaled in Britain.