This is a fresco in the Manchester Town Hall. These “illustrations” of great events of the own history were very popular in the 19th century. As frescos in public buildings they gave the illusion of a long important history. Manchester Town Hall is a Victorian-era Neo-gothic building which only pretends to be medieval underlines this circumstance.It’s interesting that Maddox Brown doesn’t pretend to be realistic, he presented a kind of naïve comic strip. Nice is the archer who seems to be taken from an Italian renaissance painting.
