Stained Glass of the Middle Ages in England and France Part 10

(MERTON COLLEGE AND EXETER)

The windows in the chapel of Merton College, Oxford, are perhaps the earliest in which the design of the Second Period has taken a definite and typical form. Antony a Wood, in his catalogue of Fellows, says that the donor, Henry de Mamesfield or Mannesfield, whose portrait is in the windows, caused them to be made in 1283, but in view of an order in the Bursar's Rolls of 1292 for stone for building these windows, this date must be rejected. Antony a Wood's statement elsewhere that the _whole_ chapel was pulled down and rebuilt in 1424 shows he is not altogether to be relied on. The presence of the fleur-de-lis with the castle of Castile in some of the borders makes it probable[12] that they were done after Edward I.'s second marriage with Margaret of France in 1299, while the arms of an Heir-Apparent as well as of a King of England in the east window makes it certain that they were executed while Edward I. and his son were both alive, _i.e._ before 1307. On the whole, and by comparison with the York gla.s.s, I should think 1303-1305 a not improbable date for them.

[Sidenote: The east window.]

There are seven windows on each side and a great east window, and, with the exception of the latter, they are still fairly perfect. Of the east window it is only the beautiful "wheel" tracery which retains its original gla.s.s, the lower lights, alas! having been destroyed in 1702 to make room for a monstrosity by one Pryce--a horrible blare of yellow. What remains in the tracery has a more transitional character than the other windows, and was probably executed first, and if only the lower lights had remained they might have thrown an interesting light on the development of the style.

The three trefoils in the centre of the wheel contain three coats of arms--the short triangular shields of the thirteenth century, of which the first is that of Edward I., the leopards of England; the second the same with a label of five points azure for his son, afterwards Edward II.; and the third that of Walter de Merton, the founder of the college. For the most part the other lights contain ornament that is wholly fourteenth century in character, but the quatrefoil on each side has a feature which shows the early date of the window. In these two small figures representing the Annunciation, though themselves in the style and colouring of the early fourteenth century, are placed directly on a background of red and blue mosaic diaper, such as one finds again and again in thirteenth century work in France, and among the fragments in the South Rose at Lincoln. I have often thought that thirteenth century glaziers sometimes kept this mosaic filling in stock, and perhaps the artist of Merton had some left on his hands and used it up here. In any case it would seem to show that the style in which he was working was fairly new to his workshop.

[Sidenote: The side windows.]

The fourteen side windows are designed on a plan which is typical of fourteenth century work both in England and in France, especially Normandy. The sections into which the glazing is divided by the heavy iron frame-bars are taken as the units of the design. One in each light is filled with a coloured panel--a figure under a canopy--and the rest with grisaille having a coloured boss in the centre of each, the whole being surrounded by a coloured border. The effect is that of a range of greenish-white windows just dotted and edged with colour, and with a single broad band of colour running horizontally through them all. This plan is common in all early fourteenth century work, especially in England and Normandy. Evreux is another example, York nave another, but with two rows of coloured panels, and the window from Rouen in Plate XXV. is only an elaboration of it forty years later. At Merton College, however, the canopy has not yet run mad, but is of modest proportions, figure and canopy together only occupying one section of glazing.

The grisaille itself is for the most part of "bulged" quarries curving round the central bosses, but two on each side have true quarries. All have the trellis pattern formed by doubling the lead with a painted line and a continuous flowing pattern of foliage--vine, oak, ivy, and fig--spreading through it over the window from a central stem. Plate XXVI. is a later example of the same thing, but with the addition of silver stain, which is nowhere found in the Merton windows.

The borders, when not formed of castle and fleur-de-lis, are of a kind found in the Chapter-House at York, and common in other fourteenth century windows--leaves white or yellow, branching at intervals from a straight or wavy stem on a coloured ground. There is not much variety in the coloured bosses, which all consist either of a simple four-leaved pattern or of a small head in white on a coloured disc.

There are, I think, only four different designs of these heads--Christ, an old man, a king, and a queen continually repeated.

[Sidenote: Poverty of ideas.]

The most woeful poverty of ideas is, however, found in the figures under the canopies. There are fourteen windows of three lights each, with a figure in each,--forty-two in all,--yet the designer could think of nothing better to do than to put an apostle in the centre light of each window, repeating two apostles to make them go round, and in every window but two a kneeling figure of the donor--"Magister Enricus de Mamesfield"--in the light on each side. Thus the proud and happy Master Henry might see himself reproduced no less than four-and-twenty times, in robes of red, white, brown or blue, wide sleeved robes with a hood, doubtless the M.A.'s gown of the period.

Neither are the apostles very interestingly treated. They are almost repet.i.tions of each other, standing in the same conventional pose and distinguished only by their attributes. The backgrounds of the figures are diapered with enamel in the usual fourteenth century way.

In point of development these windows come between the Chapter-House and the earliest nave windows at York, and correspond with the earliest work at Evreux, being the earliest windows in which the style of the Second Period has taken final and definite form. They are not without their beauty, but in looking at them one wonders what has become of the spirit that created the windows of Canterbury, Chartres, and Bourges.

[Sidenote: Exeter east window.]

Of the same stage of development as the Merton windows are the earliest of the figures remaining in the east window of Exeter Cathedral. Although this window was rebuilt and enlarged in 1390, the original gla.s.s was, it is known, used again and eked out with new.

There is an entry in the Fabric Rolls of 1301-1302 for 1271 feet of gla.s.s at 5d. per foot, "ad summas fenestras frontis novi operis"--which seems to mean the east end of the choir, and two years later a payment to Master Walter the glazier for fixing the gla.s.s "summi gabuli," but no further light is thrown on its origin. Later on, however, in the roll for 1317-1318, there is an entry for gla.s.s, apparently for the Lady Chapel, "bought at Rouen" at the rate of 6d. a foot for white (? grisaille) and 1s. 0d. for coloured, and from this it has been argued that the whole of the gla.s.s up to that time was bought from Rouen too. To me, however, the fact that Rouen is specifically mentioned here, and nowhere else, militates against this theory, while if the price of 5d. a foot paid for the gla.s.s of the east window was for finished figure work, it is far lower than that of the Rouen gla.s.s. The figures themselves are much larger than those at Merton College, and on the whole more interestingly treated. There are nine of them remaining: three patriarchs; three apostles--St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Andrew; and three female saints--St. Margaret, St.

Catherine, and, I think, the Magdalen. The canopies are large in proportion, being nearly twice the height of the figures,--an unusual height for so early a date,--but they are not unlike the Merton canopies in style. There is no trace of silver stain either in the canopies or the figures.

Another fact which to some extent tells against the theory of their Rouen origin, is that so far I have found no gla.s.s of that date at Rouen which at all resembles them, whereas as late as 1290-1295 Clement of Chartres was, as we have seen, doing work there, which shows little change from the style of the middle of the thirteenth century.

[Sidenote: Grisaille at Exeter.]

There is some very interesting grisaille in two of the chapels at Exeter, of an earlier type than that at Merton, being in fact transitional between the style of the First and Second Periods. It has the interlacing medallions of coloured strap work, with the painted grisaille pattern pa.s.sing behind them, but this latter, though chiefly of the "Herba Benedicta," breaks here and there into natural leaf.a.ge.

It is a slightly earlier point of development than even the Chapter-House at York, and corresponds very closely with some at St.

Urbain at Troyes.

FOOTNOTE:

[12] This is not altogether conclusive. The fleur-de-lis and castle had been a favourite ornament in French gla.s.s since their adoption by St. Louis.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XXIX DETAILS, FROM PLATE XXV]

X

FOURTEENTH CENTURY GLa.s.s AT YORK

The best work of the Second Period that I know of anywhere is to be found in York Minster. Here the new style seems to have become engrafted on a strong local school which had preserved much of the life and vigour of the previous age. It is true that even here one finds a certain weakening of the religious motive, but its place seems to be to some extent taken by a patriotic enthusiasm for a warrior king and for the gallant n.o.bles who followed him in the Scotch wars, and whose arms are everywhere in the gla.s.s of the nave.

[Sidenote: Chronological order of the windows.]

The windows themselves show a steady and almost unbroken progression in style from the late thirteenth to the early part of the fifteenth century, which makes them most useful for study. Leaving out the fragments of very early gla.s.s I have mentioned before, the order of their execution seems to be--

1. The "Five Sisters."

2. Chapter-House.

3. The vestibule of the Chapter-House.

4. The clerestory of the nave.

5. The first five[1] in the north aisle of the nave (dated by Winston 1306).

6. The first five[13] in the south aisle of the nave.

7. The sixth in the north aisle of the nave.

{The three west windows of the nave (contract 1338).

8. {The sixth in the south aisle of the nave.

{One (probably from the nave) in the south aisle of the choir.

9. The third from the east in the south side of the Lady Chapel.

10. The fifteenth century windows in the choir and Lady Chapel, which we shall come to later.

Whatever difference of opinion there may be about the date of these windows, I do not think this order can be disputed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE x.x.x ANGELS IN CANOPY WORK OF PLATE XXV]

[Sidenote: The Chapter-House.]

The "Five Sisters" have already been dealt with in their place in the First Period. Those of the Chapter-House, whether of earlier or later date than those of the Merton College Chapel, are distinctly earlier in style and are one of the few examples of work that is really transitional between the First and Second Periods, belonging almost as much to one as to the other. Unfortunately there is no record of the building of the Chapter-House, and its date is a matter of dispute, Drake putting it as early as the time of Archbishop Walter Grey, who died in 1256, and Browne holding it was not finished till nearly 1340--an impossible date for the gla.s.s. As in Merton Chapel the presence of the fleur-de-lis as well as the castle of Castile in the windows may mean that they are not earlier than 1299, but I do not think they are much later. The only French work I know of which at all corresponds to it is in St. Urbain at Troyes, which Viollet-le-Duc dates at about 1295, and the windows from Poitiers in Plate XV.

[Sidenote: The grisaille in the Chapter-House.]

The windows are divided by the tracery into narrow lights in which a series of coloured medallions of typical thirteenth century shape are placed one above the other on a ground of grisaille, much as in the window from Poitiers. It is in the grisaille itself that the beginnings of the new style are shown, for whereas in the "Five Sisters," which are certainly later than 1260, the pattern on the grisaille is the conventional trefoil of the First Period--the Herba Benedicta--and conforms to the shapes of the lead-work and of the hollow medallions outlined in coloured bands, in the Chapter-House, although the medallions in coloured outline are still there, the painted pattern, as at Exeter and Troyes, runs through them independently of them (giving them a rather meaningless appearance of being hung in front of it), but is wholly formed of natural foliage, oak, fig, ivy, and so on; the borders, too, are of the character of the Second Period. Similar grisaille is found at Chartham in Kent. At Poitiers, as may be seen in the ill.u.s.tration, the grisaille pattern is still of the Herba Benedicta, with a cross-hatched ground, and the border is of an earlier type; at St. Urbain at Troyes, as at Exeter, both the conventional and the natural foliage are found, but on the whole I am somewhat inclined to think that wherever the other features of the style originated these patterns of natural foliage were first used in England.

These windows, by the way, are in a sad state and want releading, instead of which the authorities have contented themselves with placing quarry glazing on the outside of them, which now that it is dirty so darkens the old windows as to kill all light and colour in them. When I say releading, I mean that and nothing more--_not_ "restoration," which is murder.

[Sidenote: The Chapter-House vestibule.]

The windows in the =L=-shaped vestibule, or pa.s.sage, which leads to the Chapter-House show a slight further development. Here the grisaille is of the same character as in the Chapter-House itself, but the coloured panels are each surmounted by a little crocketted canopy, which here appears for the first time in York. It is found in some gla.s.s at Selling, in Kent (which from the heraldry seems to commemorate Edward I.'s marriage to Margaret of France in 1299), in conjunction with grisaille in which the foliage is of the earlier conventional type, and which therefore may, perhaps, be a little earlier than these windows.

[Sidenote: The clerestory of the nave.]

The windows in the clerestory of the nave of York Minster are little, I think, if at all, later than those in the Chapter-House, but it is a little difficult to compare them as they are designed to be seen at such a very different distance from the eye, the white parts of the clerestory windows consisting only of interlacing bands of lead-work without any painted pattern at all. A small inset in Plate XVIII.

shows the general arrangement of all these windows; the great wheel of the tracery, it will be seen, is filled with colour, while the lower lights are white with two bands of coloured panels running horizontally through them all. Of these panels the lower row consists of coats of arms of the great families of the North, contained in medallions of which Plate XVI. is an example. The upper row consists for the most part of subjects contained in somewhat similar medallions, but many of the panels are filled with earlier gla.s.s of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which were doubtless preserved from the older nave. Thus, if you let your eye run along the northern side it will be arrested at the extreme west end of the line by a piece of blue that is different from all the others. It is the twelfth century blue that we have seen at St. Denis and in the west windows at Chartres, and the panel is the portion of a Jesse Tree of the same pattern as that which is found at both those places, and which I mentioned when speaking of them. Portions of the foliage of the tree are in the tracery above. I think I recognize this blue too in a panel on the south side representing a man with a horse and cart, and remains of early thirteenth century gla.s.s are plentiful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE x.x.xI THE ANNUNCIATION, FROM ST. OUEN, ROUEN Fourteenth Century]