Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 10

Dignity of effect there can be none. Not now for the first time, seemingly, is art sacrificed to what we call the literary idea.

It shakes one's faith somewhat in the sincerity of the early mediaeval artist to find that in the serried ranks of Kings, Prophets, Bishops, and other holy men, keeping guard over the church in the clerestory lights, one figure often does duty for a variety of personages, the colour only, and perhaps the face, being changed. At Reims there are as many as six in a row, all precisely of the same pattern, though the fraud may not be detected until one examines them from the triforium gallery. At Lyons, again, it looks as if the same thing occurred; but one cannot get near enough to them to be quite certain. None the less they are fine in colour. Thirteenth century gla.s.s was capable of great things in the way of colour; and the rows of Kings and Prophets looking down upon you from the clerestory of a great church like Bourges, archaic though the drawing be, are truly solemn and imposing.

CHAPTER XIII.

EARLY GRISAILLE.

With grisaille gla.s.s begins a new chapter in the history of gla.s.s painting, and a most important one--not only because of the beautiful work which was done from the first in white, but also because coloured gla.s.s grew, so to speak, always towards the light.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 85. S. SERGE, ANGERS.]

The first coloured windows were intense in colour, rich, and even heavy.

The note they struck was deep, solemn, suited to the church and to the times. Neither priest nor parishioner was afraid to sacrifice a certain amount of light. It was the business of a window to shut in those that worshipped from the outer world, and wrap them in mysterious and beautiful gloom. With other days, however, came other ideals. As time went on, and men emerged from the dark ages, the problem of the glazier was how more and more to lighten his gla.s.s; until at last white gla.s.s predominated, and the question was how to introduce colour into it.

Meanwhile the thirteenth century glaziers resorted, where they wanted light, to the use of windows in grisaille, in absolute contrast to the rich picture-gla.s.s in the same church.

The model for grisaille design was readily found in the earlier pattern work in plain glazing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 86. S. SERGE, ANGERS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 87. S. JEAN-AUX-BOIS.]

This last never quite went out of use. But already in the thirteenth century, and probably in the twelfth, it began to be supplemented, for the most part, by painting. The exceptionally graceful work at S. Serge, Angers, for example, on this page and the last, is probably not very much later than the year 1200. You can see at a glance how this is only a carrying further of the unpainted work in the same church (page 27) attributed to the thirteenth century. There may be found indeed amidst the plain glazing sc.r.a.ps of painted work; but they never happen to fit, and have pretty certainly found their way into the window in course of repairs. The unpainted window seems to be of greener and more silvery gla.s.s than the painted, to which perhaps the cross-hatching gives a rather h.o.r.n.y look.

The one way of painting grisaille in the thirteenth century was to trace the design (which of course followed the traditional lines) boldly upon the white gla.s.s, and then to cross-hatch the ground, more or less delicately according to the scale of the work and its distance from the eye, as here shown. By this means the pattern was made to stand out clear and light against the background, which had now the value of a tint, only a much more brilliant one than could have been got by a film or wash of colour. Very occasionally a feature, such as the group of four crowns which form the centre of the circle, above, might be emphasised by filling in the ground about them in solid pigment; but that was never done to any large extent. The rule was always to cross-hatch the ground.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 88. S. JEAN-AUX-BOIS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 89. SOISSONS.]

With the introduction of colour into grisaille comes always the question as to how much or how little of it there shall be. There is a good deal of Early French work, which, on the face of it, was designed first as a sort of strapwork of interlacing bands in plain glazing, and then further enriched with painted work, not growing from it, except by way of exception. This is seen in the example here given. The painter indulged in slight modifications of detail as he went on. He had a model which he copied more or less throughout the window; but he allowed himself the liberty of playing variations, and he even departed from it at times. By this means he adapted himself to the gla.s.s, which did not always take just the same lines, and at the same time he amused himself, and us, more than if he had multiplied one pattern with monotonous precision. His painting was strong enough to keep the leads in countenance; that is to say, his main outlines would be as thick (see opposite) as lead lines.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 90. EARLY DETAIL.]

Patterns such as those on pages 138, 139, and below, from Soissons, Reims, S. Jean-aux-Bois, would make good glazed windows apart from the painting on them. Indeed, the painting is there comparatively insignificant in design. In the Soissons work, in particular, it consists of little more than cross-hatching upon the background, to throw up the interlacing of the glazed bands; for, with the exception of just a touch of colour in the one opposite, these designs are executed entirely in white gla.s.s. The geometric glazing shapes so completely convey the design, that the painted detail might almost be an after-thought.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 91. SOISSONS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 92. REIMS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 93. LINCOLN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 94. WATER PERRY, OXON.]

In much of the earliest grisaille there is absolutely no colour but the greenish hue belonging to what we are agreed to call white gla.s.s, and the effect of it is invariably so satisfactory as to show that colour is by no means indispensable. And, at all events in France, the colour was at first very sparingly used, except in those twelfth century patterns (pages 35, 118, 120) which cannot fairly be called grisaille. In the window on page 137 the colour is, practically speaking, enclosed in small s.p.a.ces ingeniously contrived between the interlacing bands of white; in that on page 138 it is introduced in half rings, which form part of the marginal line, and in spots or jewels; but in either case there is little of it, and it is most judiciously introduced. The interlacing of bands of plain white upon a ground of cross-hatching, itself enriched with scrollwork clear upon it, is characteristically French. Similar bands of white occur, though not interlacing, in the comparatively clumsy panel from Lincoln (above), but the more usual English way was to make the bands of white broader, and to paint a pattern upon them, as in the lancet from Water Perry, Oxfordshire (opposite), or in the much more satisfactory light from Lincoln (overleaf), leaving only a margin of clear gla.s.s next the cross-hatched background. A similar kind of thing occurs in the church of S. Pierre at Chartres (below). A yet more usual plan with us was to make the strapwork in colour, as at Salisbury. In the patterns on this page the straps do not interlace. In that on page 143 they not only interlace one with the other, but the painted ornament, which now takes the form of more elaborate scrollwork than heretofore, is intertwined with them.

This is an extremely good example of Early English grisaille. Altogether Salisbury Cathedral is rich in white gla.s.s windows of this period (pages 143, 148, 329, 332).

[Ill.u.s.tration: 95. LINCOLN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 96. S. PIERRE, CHARTRES.]

The grisaille in the clerestory at Bourges is similar to the Salisbury work, but it is not possible to get near enough to it to make careful comparison. The scrollwork on page 143 may be profitably compared with the very unusual white window at S. Jean-aux-Bois (overleaf). There the design consists altogether of scrolls in white upon a cross-hatched ground. It is as if the designer had set out to glaze up a pattern in white upon a white ground, cross-hatched. But it is obvious that, as there is no change of colour, it was no longer necessary always to cut the ornament out of a separate piece of gla.s.s from the ground. We find consequently that, wherever it is convenient, a painted line is used to save leading. That, it has been already explained (page 24), was a practice from the first; and it was resorted to more and more. It came in very conveniently in the French windows, in which the design consisted largely of white strapwork. It was adopted in the example from Chalons here given, though it does not appear in the sketch, any more than it does in the gla.s.s until you examine it very carefully. However, in the sketches from the great clerestory window from Reims Cathedral (overleaf), and in the smaller one from S. Jean-aux-Bois (facing it), the economy of glazing is easy to perceive; whilst in that from Coutances (page 147) the glazier is already so sparing of his leads that they no longer always follow or define the main lines of the pattern.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 97. GRISAILLE, SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 98. CHaLONS.]

In a remarkable window in the choir of Chartres Cathedral (page 150) the design includes interlacing bands both of white and colour, the coloured ones flanked with strips of white; but the white bands are not glazed separately. They are throughout included in the same piece of gla.s.s as the cross-hatching, which defines them. This ingenious and very graceful pattern window is still of the thirteenth century, though clearly of much later date than, for example, the windows of S. Jean-aux-Bois, which might indeed almost belong to the twelfth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 99. CLERESTORY, REIMS.]

In several of the Salisbury windows (pages 148, 386) thin straps of colour are bounded on the outer side by broader bands of white painted with pattern. And here it should be noticed the bands no longer interlace at all; on the contrary, the ornamental forms are superposed one upon the other. This is very markedly the case on page 148. In the centre of the light is a series of circular discs, and at the sides of these a row of zig-zags, which, as it were, disappear behind them, whilst at the edges of the window, again, is an array of segments of smaller circles losing themselves behind these. In such cases, it will be seen, the broad white bands fulfil the very useful purpose of keeping the coloured lines apart, and separating one series of shapes from the other. In this window, as in the narrow light on page 386, where the vesica shape is occupied once more with flowing scrollwork, and as in all but one of the windows on that page, the background of cross-hatching is for the first time omitted, and the pencilled pattern is by so much the less effective. As a rule, patterns traced in mere outline like this belong to a later date; but these windows are certainly of the thirteenth century. It is seldom safe to say that this or that practice belonged exclusively to any one period. The white gla.s.s on page 335, almost entirely without paint, might have been executed in the twelfth century, but its border indicates more likely the latter part of the thirteenth. Quite the simplest form of glazing was to lead the gla.s.s together in squares or diamonds. These "quarries," as they are called (from the French _carre_) are a.s.sociated sometimes with rosettes and bands of other pattern work, as at Lincoln (pages 284, 287); but more ordinarily the ornamental part of the window is made up entirely of them. "Quarry" is a term to be remembered. It plays in the next century an important part in the design of windows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 100. S. JEAN-AUX-BOIS.]

The best-known grisaille windows in England are the famous group of long lancets, ending the north transept of York Minster, which are known by the name of the Five Sisters. You remember the legend about them. The "inimitable Boz" relates it at length in "Nicholas Nickleby"; but it is nonsense, all the same. The story tells how in the reign of Henry the Fourth five maiden ladies worked the designs in embroidery, and sent them abroad to be carried out in gla.s.s. But, as it happens, they belong to the latter part of the thirteenth century; they are unmistakably English work; and, what is more, no woman, maiden, wife, or widow, ever had, or could have had, a hand in their design. Their authorship is written on the face of them. Every line in their composition shows them to be the work of a strong man, and a practical glazier, who worked according to the traditions that had come down to him. A designer recognises in it a man who knew his trade, and knew it thoroughly. The notion that any glazier ever worked from an embroidered design is too absurd. As well might the needlewoman go to the glazier to design her st.i.tchery. But such is the popular ignorance of workmanship, and of its intimate connection with design, that no doubt the vergers will go on repeating their apocryphal tale as long as vergers continue to fill the office of personal conductors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 101. COUTANCES.]

The Five Sisters are rather looser and freer in design than the Salisbury gla.s.s, and have broad borders of white. In detail they are certainly not superior to that, nor in general design, so far as one can make it out at all; but, from their very size and position, they produce a much more imposing effect. Whoever is not impressed by the Five Sisters is not likely ever to be moved by grisaille. They form one huge fivefold screen of silvery gla.s.s. The patterns are only with great difficulty to be deciphered. It is with these as with many others of the most fascinating windows in grisaille; the gla.s.s is corroded on the surface, black with the dirt and lichen of ages, cracked and crossed with leads introduced by the repairing glazier, until the design is about as intelligible as would be a conglomeration of huge spiders'

webs. But, for all that, nay, partly because of it, it is a thing of absolute beauty, as beautiful as a spider's web, beaded with dewdrops, glistening in the sun on a frosty winter's morning. It is a dream of silvery light: who cares for details of design? But it is all this, because it was designed, because it was planned by a glazier for glazing, and has all that gives gla.s.s its charm.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 102. GRISAILLE, SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 103. CHARTRES CATHEDRAL.]

Stained gla.s.s, like the men who design it, has always the defects of its qualities. It is the first business of those who work in it to see that it has at least the qualities of its defects.

CHAPTER XIV.

WINDOWS OF MANY LIGHTS.

The merry life of the medallion window was a short one. It reigned during the Early Gothic period supreme; but after the end of the thirteenth century it soon went quite out of fashion, and with it the practice of shaping the bars to suit the pattern of the window--a practice, it will have been noticed, not followed in grisaille windows, though it might very well have been.

With the change which came over the spirit of later thirteenth century architecture some new departure in the design of gla.s.s became inevitable. The windows spoken of till now were all single lights, broader or narrower, as the case might be, but each so far off from the other that it had to be complete in itself, and might just as well be designed with no more than general reference to its neighbours. But in time it began to be felt in France that the broad Norman window was too broad, and so they divided it into two by a central shaft, or mullion as it is called, of stone. In England equally it began to be felt that the long narrow lancet lights were too much in the nature of isolated piercings in the bare wall, and so the builder brought them closer and closer together, until they also were divided by narrow mullions.

In this way, and in answer especially to the growing demand for more light in churches, and consequently for more windows, it became the custom to group them. Eventually the window group resolved itself into a single window of several, sometimes of many, lights, divided only by narrow stone mullions. Or, to account for it in another way, windows of considerable size coming into vogue, it became necessary, for constructional no less than for artistic reasons, to subdivide them by mullions into two or more lights. The arched window head was broken up into smaller fancifully shaped "tracery" lights, as they are called; and so we arrive at the typical "Decorated" Gothic window.

The height of these windows being naturally in proportion to their width, the separate lights into which they were divided were apt to be exceedingly long. To have treated them after the Early medallion manner, each with its broad border, would have been to draw attention to this, and even to exaggerate their length. The problem now to be solved in gla.s.s was, how best to counteract the effect of insecurity likely to result from the thinness of the upright lines of the stone and the narrowness of the openings between them. It is not meant to say that the medallion window expired without a spasm. For a while Decorated windows were treated very much after the fashion of the earlier medallion windows. The medallions were necessarily smaller, and usually long in proportion to their width, although they extended now to the edge of the stonework, the narrowish border to the lights pa.s.sing, as it were, behind them. This is very amply ill.u.s.trated in the windows in the choir clerestory at Tours. Occasionally there is no border but a line of white and colour, and the whole interval between the elongated hexagonal or octagonal panels is given up to mosaic diaper. The medallions naturally range themselves in horizontal order throughout the three or four lights of the window, giving just the indication of a horizontal line across them. By way of exception, the subject of the Last Supper extends through all three lights of the East window, the tablecloth forming a conspicuous band of light across it. This gla.s.s at Tours is deep and rich throughout, as intense sometimes as in earlier work, though warmer in colour, owing to the greater amount of yellow gla.s.s employed. That was not to last long.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 104. DECORATED MEDALLION WINDOW, GERMAN.]