Stained Glass of the Middle Ages in England and France Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XVIII BORDER AND SHIELDS, FROM PETER DE DENE WINDOW, NORTH AISLE OF NAVE, YORK MINSTER, WITH DETAILS FROM WINDOW IN SOUTH AISLE AND SKETCH OF CLERESTORY WINDOW Fourteenth Century]

[Sidenote: The apse.]

Five of the seven great lancets of the clerestory of the apse are devoted to the glorification of the Virgin Mother, or perhaps one should say, to the fact of the Virgin Birth. This is what one would expect at Chartres. Not only is the church dedicated to Notre Dame, but the place in the Middle Ages was held sacred to her above all others in France.

Tradition says that the Church occupies the site of a grotto in which the Druids worshipped "the Virgin that shall bear a child," of whom they had set up a wooden image, which was preserved by the Christians when the grotto became a Christian church. Certain it is that down to the Revolution a very ancient and quite black wooden statue was worshipped in the Chapel of Notre Dame Sous-terre--the ancient grotto--where it had been at all events since the days of Fulbert, who built the eleventh century Cathedral. The Sansculottes burnt it, and its place has been taken by a modern work which professes to be a copy of it.

Chartres, too, can boast of the possession of the Holy Veil. Given to Charlemagne by the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, it has escaped successive fires, and though cut in two at the Revolution, is still preserved in the Treasury.

Owing to the great height and narrowness of the lancets, each contains several figures or figure subjects, one above the other. In the head of the central lancet is Our Lady enthroned, with her Child on her knee, and below her are the Annunciation and the Salutation. In the head of the light on either side is an angel incensing, and in the lights beyond these, a cherub and a seraph. Below these are Moses, Aaron,[10] David, and the four major Prophets--Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel--and Daniel. The arrangement of these figures seems, however, quite haphazard, and as if the original design had not been carried out. The two remaining lancets, on the extreme right and left, contain, respectively, scenes from the lives of St. John the Baptist and St. Peter. How far these are meant to have a bearing on the central subject I am not quite sure. The uppermost subjects in them are the Baptism of Christ and the "Domine, quo vadis?"

[Sidenote: The big angel.]

The Big Angel (Plate X.) on the north side of the Virgin is especially puzzling. The other six lights of the apse have each three figures or figure subjects, set one above the other in elongated medallions,--Plate XI. shows two of them, King David and Ezekiel,--and at the foot of each is a panel showing the donors. The other figures are so set as to form regular tiers round the apse, but this angel is twice the size of any of them and forces the figure below--Aaron--down out of line, leaving no room for another figure between him and the donor.

Perhaps this light represents part of a design for the apse which was afterwards modified in order to get more figures in. The donor is one Gaufridus, who has been identified with a certain G.o.dfrey d'Illiers, a gentleman of the neighbourhood, whereas the rest are given by the Guilds--the bakers, butchers, money-changers, and furriers, which latter are seen actually bringing their window.

The Prophets bear a good deal of resemblance to the figures from the clerestory at Canterbury. The Isaiah at both places wears the same curious headdress--a little round hat, not unlike the latest form of "bowler" of our own days. The figures are not from the same drawings, for the att.i.tudes are different, but the Chartres artist has at least remembered Canterbury choir, which was probably the work of his master, thirty or forty years earlier.

[Sidenote: The canopy.]

Notice the simple architectural canopy over this angel. All the single figures at Chartres and in most other thirteenth century windows have them, and their counterparts may be found in the canopies over the sculptured figures on the porches outside. They occur also at Canterbury over some of the surviving figures from the clerestory, but it is noteworthy that whereas at Canterbury the canopies are round arched (and the same is true of the architecture in the medallion windows), at Chartres they are nearly all either cusped or pointed, which I take as additional evidence in support of my opinion that the Canterbury work is the older of the two.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XIX ST. MARGARET, WEST WINDOW OF NORTH AISLE OF NAVE, YORK MINSTER Fourteenth Century]

In thirteenth century work these canopies are a fairly un.o.btrusive feature, but in the next period they were destined, as we shall see later, to be developed out of all reason or proportion.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] This is a later feature, and found at Bourges and elsewhere.

[10] The miraculous budding of Aaron's rod was considered a type of the Virgin Birth.

VII

OTHER THIRTEENTH CENTURY WINDOWS

[Sidenote: Salisbury and Peterborough.]

A single band of craftsmen might, as far as we can now tell, have been responsible for nearly all the stained gla.s.s that was produced at any one time in the twelfth century in England and the north of France; but by the time the Trinity Chapel at Canterbury was finished, a great many such bands must have been at work, yet all deriving their art from the same source--the school of Chartres, St. Denis, and Canterbury. The output was enormous, especially in the first half of the thirteenth century. I have already spoken of Lincoln, but Salisbury and Peterborough were once rich in gla.s.s of the thirteenth century, that of Peterborough--now destroyed--being known to have been given, some of it at least, as early as 1214, and York has the famous "Five Sisters."

[Sidenote: Bourges.]

In France, Bourges is only second to Chartres for the quant.i.ty and interest of its early gla.s.s, which was certainly begun long before the windows of Chartres were finished. Every one knows the rose windows of Notre Dame at Paris, and besides these Amiens, Beauvais, Laon, Rheims, Tours, Soissons, Auxerre, and in fact nearly all the great cathedrals of France, contain gla.s.s of the period, while fragments of it are to be found in many parish churches both in England and France.

[Sidenote: Westwell.]

At Westwell in Kent, for instance, is a Jesse Tree of 1240-1250 which is well worth study, in which the details of the foliage resemble fragments of one at Salisbury and another at Troyes, and show the development that had taken place from the Jesse Trees of Chartres and St. Denis.

It is impossible, however, in the limits of this work to describe even all the important windows of this period, and I have taken those I have already described as typical of their time and as together showing the progress of the development of the art.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XX ST. STEPHEN, FROM SOUTH AISLE OF NAVE, YORK MINSTER Fourteenth Century]

[Sidenote: The Sainte Chapelle.]

The most complete example of the work of the latter part of the thirteenth century is the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, built by St. Louis to contain the Crown of Thorns, which he had purchased with other relics from the Emperor of Constantinople, who was then in need of ready money. The Chapel was consecrated in 1248, but although some at least of the windows are said to have been prepared beforehand and to have been in their place on that occasion, yet the series was certainly not completed till after the death of St. Louis in 1270, as that event is represented in one of them.

The gla.s.s has unfortunately suffered a good deal from restoration, and it is difficult now to say quite how much beauty it once had, but it must be confessed that at present it gives one none of the joy and wonder of Chartres. Yet the very design of the Chapel shows the importance which the art had now attained, for the building is constructed entirely with a view to being filled with stained gla.s.s, being in fact a mere gla.s.s-house with no wall s.p.a.ces at all. If the colour effect may be judged of from the specimens of the original gla.s.s now in South Kensington Museum, the place must have been a wondrous Aladdin's cave of jewels, but at the same time it may be doubted whether the arrangement was a wise one. The windows at Chartres gain immensely by the s.p.a.ces of gloom between them, whereas here the eye gets no rest.

In detail, apart from colour, the work shows a certain falling off.

The artist seems to have been cramped by the necessity of adapting the medallion window to such narrow lights. One misses the fine broad border which does so much to "pull together" the earlier medallion windows. The borders at the Sainte Chapelle are narrow and uninteresting, and even so the medallions have sometimes to overlap them.

[Sidenote: Work of Clement of Chartres at Rouen.]

On the other hand, the work of Clement of Chartres in Rouen Cathedral, which is as late as 1290-1295, is as good as anything that was done in the thirteenth century. Besides a great many broken remains of thirteenth century work in the nave, there are five complete windows in the ambulatory of the apse. Two of these between them ill.u.s.trate the story of Joseph, and are particularly beautiful. One of them (Plate XIV.) is signed by Clement of Chartres, and the other is obviously by the same hand. I should hesitate, however, to say positively that the other three are his work too, but I think two of them may be. Of these, one contains in its lowest section the story of the Good Samaritan, with other subjects above which I have not identified, and the other--a very good one--the story of St. Julian, which is a parallel to that of Oedipus except that, being Christian, it ends with atonement and forgiveness.

The fifth window ill.u.s.trates the Pa.s.sion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. It is hardly as good as the others, and is very red and hot in general colour. The filling in, of yellow suns on a blue ground, is very unlike any other thirteenth century work. On the whole this window seems to me to show a certain restlessness, indicative of the change of style that was so soon to follow. The redness, however, may perhaps be intentional, as being appropriate to the subject, for of the three twelfth century windows in the west end of Chartres Cathedral, the one which ill.u.s.trates the Pa.s.sion is far redder than the others.

The iron-work of these windows shows a return to the straight-bar system, but the relation of the medallions to the iron-work is, as may be seen by the ill.u.s.tration, wholly different to what it was in the twelfth century. By the end of the thirteenth century the bent iron-work has wholly disappeared.

Before leaving the Early Period I must touch upon another of its developments, namely, the grisaille window.

[Sidenote: Grisaille windows.]

Side by side with the richly coloured windows which we have been considering, there had grown up during the thirteenth century a style of window in which a wholly different effect was aimed at. These are what are called grisaille windows, in which the bulk of the gla.s.s is white, only studded here and there with jewels of colour and with, perhaps, a coloured border, the surface of the white gla.s.s being variegated and ornamented with delicate patterns in painted line work.

The effect of this in old gla.s.s is very beautiful,--there are few things lovelier than "the Five Sisters" at York,--but all modern attempts to imitate it have been hopeless failures, looking like so much transparent paper. Perhaps our modern white gla.s.s is too clear and hard-looking, or the difference may be merely that between the work of those who are artists and those who are not.

The causes which led to the development of this style of window were probably two: one, the desire for more light, of which the richly coloured windows admitted but little; and the other, simply economy, for a window of this sort could be produced comparatively cheaply.

Then, too, the Cistercians, whose rule, adopted in the twelfth century, prohibited the use of colour altogether, had shown what could be done in patterns of white gla.s.s and lead alone.

Unless you count the "gryphon windows" in St. Denis, which are mainly the work of Viollet-le-Duc, grisaille seems almost wholly a development of the thirteenth century. It is interesting to see that just as the design of the coloured window seems always to have been conceived as a light pattern on a dark ground, so the earliest grisaille, even though the quant.i.ty of white far exceeds the colour, still seems to have been conceived as a white pattern on a coloured ground, the ground being, as it were, almost entirely hidden by the pattern. Later this idea gets reversed, and the coloured pieces are mere jewels or lines contained in the pattern.

In a white window the leads, from their greater thickness, are more conspicuous than the traced lines of the painting, and in consequence it is upon the leads that the artist depends for the main features of his design. The earliest grisaille windows may be divided into two cla.s.ses: those in which the pattern is formed of narrow "straps" of white gla.s.s interlacing or seeming to interlace; and the other in which the leads form a flat geometrical pattern, as at Lincoln. The painted pattern on the gla.s.s consists of branching scroll work in simple outline, forming stems and the round-lobed leaves which were the thirteenth century convention for foliage. In the earlier work the ground is covered with delicate cross-hatching, which at a distance resolves itself into a pearly grey, against which the scroll work stands out white. At first, too, the painted pattern is, so to speak, contained within the leading, and merely enriches and emphasizes the pattern formed by it; but in later work, towards the end of the century, it becomes independent of the leading and grows through it, spreading over the surface of the window in graceful curves like a creeper over a trellis. The influence of the medallion window is often seen in contemporary grisaille, of which the design frequently consists of interlacing medallions of strap-work of the same shape as those in the coloured windows.

[Sidenote: Rheims.]

[Sidenote: Angers, Soissons, and Chartres.]

The ornament surrounding some of the figures in the triforium of St.

Remi at Rheims, and which Mr. Westlake considers to date from about 1200, contains so much colour as to be hardly grisaille, and the same may be said of one of the lancets in the north transept of Lincoln Cathedral, of which the others contain grisaille of a later date.

There is, however, some very early thirteenth century grisaille--true grisaille, with interlacing bands--at St. Serge at Angers, and some at Soissons of about 1230. Chartres has four or five grisaille windows, of the middle of the century or a little earlier, in the apsidal chapels. These have broad, richly coloured borders, a very beautiful feature, which one finds also at Salisbury.

[Sidenote: Westminster Abbey.]