Lodging Dwelling Painting: Dives and Lazarus at Pittleworth Manor

Taking as its focus a wall painting at Pittleworth Manor, Hampshire, this essay investigates the concepts of place and of dwelling as they were understood and experienced in Renaissance England, particularly by those without a true dwelling-place. The anonymous painting, dated 1580, represents the Biblical story of rich Dives and the beggar Lazarus. It articulates the position of the placeless both in life and after death, and questions what it really takes to “dwell” in this life. The owner of Pittleworth was himself concerned with place-making in a different way, for as the hereditary prison-keeper of Winchester he enabled his co-religionists, recusant Catholics, to turn their prison into a dwelling. The wall-painting declared that he shared with his community values of hospitality and charity when in fact their positions diverged considerably.