The Ear of the Beholder

Huon Mallalieu in conversation with Dr Martin Warner, Bishop of Chichester and Dr Joost Joustra

Jointly hosted by the Huguenot Museum and the Eglise Protestante Francaise de Londres:

The speakers

Huon Mallalieu catalogued English watercolours at Christie’s before becoming a freelance writer on art, antiques and history. Huon has been art market writer for Country Life since 1990 and writes on exhibitions in The Oldie

In 2009 he published 1066 and Rather More recording his twelve days walk from York to Battle in the steps of King Harold’s army

Joost Joustra is an art historian based in the department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London. He previously was Curator of Art and Religion at the National Gallery, London. Joost teaches on the MA in Theology, Bible, and the Arts, which is run in collaboration with the National Gallery. Joost co-curated the 2023 exhibition Saint Francis of Assisi.

Martin Warner was Priest Adminstrator at the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, 1993-2002. As Residentiary Canon at St Paul’s Cathedral, 2003-2010 he contributed to the Cathedral’s connection with the Art World. He was translated to Chichester in 2012.

The Book

The Ear of the Beholder is published by Thomas Del Mar in November 2025

Copies will be available for sale and signature after the discussion

This project explores the ways in which at least since the 15th century European artists have deliberately put sounds into our minds. It was prompted by an experiment conducted by the Bates Collection of Mediaeval Instruments in Oxford which commissioned luthiers to reproduce the instruments shown in the Hell panel of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. The curators professed to be surprised that the results sounded hideous. This struck me as bizarre; they are Hellish torture instruments! As he intended, Bosch’s first audience will have understood and ‘heard’ that immediately, since music was so much a part of life at all levels of society. They would also have understood the significance of the famous ‘bum notes’, which no one subsequently bothered to read and play until about five years ago.

Pre-15th century Western painting was essentially religious and ‘proscenium arch’, with the actors relating to each other while the audience (us) had only to adore. The Renaissance, particularly in the North, then the Reformation and secular patronage fundamentally changed this, as artists invited us, like groundlings at the Globe, to interact with the painted characters. Think of the difference between Botticelli’s and Cranach’s Venuses.

It is not only music that is suggested. Pouring liquids, creaking carts, breaking waves, battles, bird-song, lovers’ whispers, weather, railways, animals all feature. Once you start to listen, landscapes can become virtual strip cartoons, as suggested sounds prompt us to envisage what is about to happen next, and quiet interiors fill with noises. The phenomenon is most evident in Flemish and Dutch genre painting, but it is also widespread elsewhere.