Perley's words critique Margaret's willingness to accept a passive role, to continue as a
lay figure in contrast to the businessman who would be her husband.
Courbet made no bones about the use of
lay figures. One hangs in imitation of a crucified thief in the background of his 1855 autobiographical canvas The Artist's Studio: A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist (not in the exhibition).
Lay figures rarely take center stage in the history of religion--much more common are studies of the theologians or revivalists, movements or churches.
Woodman" series (1947-70), his sequence of pornographic poses acted out by a couple of wooden
lay figures, the jointed humanoid models used by painters to work out poses.
They are
lay figures mounted in the museum where all may take them in at a glance" (170).
Here among the overgrown, broken down, carved stone
lay figures of saints who once decorated the long forgotten buildings on this site, for here once stood the chapels of Mary Magdalen and St Leonard.
The first three chapters present the reader with a critique of the clergy and the major
lay figures. While this is marginally interesting, it tells us little about the usual preconditions of reformation.
