Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 12

It can hardly be said that geometric pattern windows in strong colour are ever very successful. The Germans, who, it should be remembered, call their second Gothic period the "Geometric," often attempted it, but without conspicuous success.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 125. 14TH CENTURY GERMAN.]

In Germany it was customary to use geometric diaper work long after it had gone out of use in France. In fact, it is there more likely a sign of the second period. The crosslines in the diaper from Regensburg (opposite) would have been in lead, not paint, if the work had been executed in the thirteenth century; again, the diaper below it would not at that period have been painted in the likeness of oak-leaves. Diaper of this kind was not used merely to fill up between medallions, but as background, for example, to canopy work. Frequently it was very small in scale, as well as elaborate in pattern. It can hardly be said that it was always worth the pains spent upon it--often it was not; but the Germans avoided, as a rule, the dangerous red and blue combination, and preferred, as did also the Italians, less stereotyped arrangements of green and yellow, or of red and green, or of red and green and yellow; if they ventured upon red and blue, it was with a difference very much to their credit. For example, they would enclose diamonds of ruby in bands of purple-brown, with just a point of blue at the interstices; again, they would make a diaper of purple, purple-brown, and grey; and in many another way show that they deliberately aimed at colour in such work--whereas many of the Early diapers suggest that the glazier was thinking more of pattern. An instance of heraldic diaper is given on page 169.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 126. FREIBURG.]

In Italy also you find sometimes, as at Florence and a.s.sisi, medallion windows with mosaic diaper between, or mosaic diaper used as background to figures which certainly cannot be described as Early.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 127. FREIBURG.]

The Germans differed from the rest of us in their frank use of geometric pattern. We habitually disguised it more or less, clothing it most likely with foliation; they used it quite nakedly, and were not ashamed.

Instances of this innocent use of geometric form are here given. At Freiburg are quite a number of windows entirely of geometric pattern work. There is a good deal of white gla.s.s in them, but they count rather for colour than for grisaille. It would not be quite unfair to say they fall between the two stools. These designs are much more pleasing in the gla.s.s than in black and white (where they have rather too much the appearance of floor-cloth), but they are by no means the happiest work of the Germans of that day. Where they were really most successful, more successful than their contemporaries, was in foliated or floral pattern windows, and those of a kind also standing dangerously near midway between colour and grisaille. The method of execution employed in them was to a large extent strictly mosaic; but there is quite a refreshing variety and novelty, as well as very considerable ingenuity, in their design.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 128. FROM REGENSBURG, MUNICH MUSEUM.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 129. IVY, MUNICH MUSEUM.]

The window from Regensburg on page 389 sets out very much as if it were going to be a grisaille window; but it has, in the first place, more colour than is usual in grisaille, and, in the second, it will be seen that the little triangular ground s.p.a.ces next the border are filled with pot-metal. The contrast of the set pattern and the four coloured leaves crossing each circle with the flowing undergrowth of grisaille is unusual, and so is the cunning alternation of cross-hatching and plain white ground. The designs from Munich Museum on pages 171 to 174 have nothing in common with grisaille. The design consists of natural foliage chiefly in white, growing tree-like upon a coloured ground up the centre of the light. In the one the stem is waved, in the other it takes a spiral form, in the third it is more naturalistic. But nature is not very consistently followed. What appears like a vine on page 171 has husks or flowers which it is not easy to recognise; and the ivy here is endowed with tendrils. The border of convolvulus leaves and the hop scroll, opposite, are unmistakable, though there is some inconsistency between the naturalness of the leaves and the stiffness of their growth.

The ivy pattern differs from the others inasmuch as the leaves show light against the yellow ground, whilst the green stem and stalks tell dark upon it, and there is a band of red within the outer border which holds the rather spiky leaves together. The most interesting window of this kind ill.u.s.trated is that on page 174, in which the stem is ingeniously twisted into quatrefoil medallion shapes, so as to allow a change in the colour of the ground, and the leaves are designed to go beyond the filling and form a pattern upon the border. The rose is a hackneyed theme enough, but this at least is a new way of working it out. Fourteenth century German windows are altogether more varied in design than contemporary French or English work. The gla.s.s is not so much all of one pattern. There are more surprises in it. The Germans treated grisaille in a way very much their own. At the risk of a certain coa.r.s.eness of execution, they would paint out the background to their natural foliage in solid pigment, or in brown just hatched with lines scratched through to the clear gla.s.s. That is very effectively done, for example, at the Church of S. Thomas at Stra.s.sburg. It is not contended that this is at all a better plan than that practised in France or England: it is on the whole less happy; but there are positions in which it is more to the purpose; and it has at least the merit of being different; it suggests something better than it accomplishes, and it is a timely reminder that the best methods we know of cannot be accepted as final.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 130. GERMAN ORNAMENTAL GLa.s.s.]

Again at Regensburg there is some distant ornamental work, so simple in execution that it is little more than glazing in colours; in fact just what distant work should be--effective in its place without any waste of labour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 131. 14TH CENTURY GLa.s.s.]

A word or two remains to be said about borders. The narrower decorated light implied, as was said, a narrower border. It was, as a rule, only when a wide Early window had to be glazed that there was room for a broad one. In that case it showed of course the new naturalism, with perhaps the added interest of animal life, as here ill.u.s.trated; but there lingers in German borders such as this and the one on page 338, something of early tradition. It looks as if it would not be difficult to accept glazing lines like these and fill them in with painted detail _a la Romanesque_. In one of the windows in York Minster there is a border of alternate leaves and monkeys, both much of a size, which broadens out at the base, affording s.p.a.ce for the representation of a hunt, men, dogs, gra.s.s and all complete.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 132. 14TH CENTURY GERMAN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 133. 14TH CENTURY GERMAN.]

There was another reason for the adoption of a narrower border. Not only were windows narrower now, but their arched heads were cusped, which made it exceedingly difficult to carry any but the narrowest possible border round them satisfactorily. It will be seen how awkwardly the border fits (or does not fit) the window head on page 155. Even the simplest border had to be very much distorted in order to make it follow the line of the masonry; and, in any case, it gave a very ugly shape within the border, and one again difficult to fill. Already, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the designer found it convenient to run his border straight up into the cusped head of the light and let the stonework cut it abruptly short; that occurs at Carca.s.sonne. Sometimes, as at Tewkesbury, the inconvenient border is allowed to end just above the springing line of the arch, against a pinnacle of the canopy, beyond which point there is only a line or two of white or colour, by way of frame or finish to the background. An unusual but quite satisfactory way of getting over the difficulty of carrying the border round the window head is, to accept the springing line of the arch as the end of the central design, and to make the foliated border spread and fill the entire window head above. Some quarry lights in the triforium at Evreux are effectively treated in that manner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 134. STRa.s.sBURG.]

Types of ordinary Decorated borders, English, French, and German, are shown in this and the preceding chapter. The leaf.a.ge springs from one side or the other or from a central stem, or from either side of a waving stem, or from two stems intertwined (page 158). Sometimes the ground on one side is of a different colour from that on the other; in any case the glazing is usually simple. One of the leaf borders at Rouen Cathedral includes a series of little green birds; another, an oak pattern, is inhabited at intervals by squirrels and wild men of the woods. Rather interesting variations upon the ordinary type of border are given on this and the preceding pages. The broader one above is of distinctly unusual character, inasmuch as it has no background except the painting out, and the colour of the leaf.a.ge varies quasi-accidentally.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 135. 14TH CENTURY GERMAN.]

The use of the rosette borders on pages 171, 172 is sufficiently accounted for by the desire to get contrast to the foliated filling, but it occurs at all periods more or less. So does the "block border"; but for all that it is almost as characteristic of Decorated work as the leaf border. It is seen in its simplest form on page 144. On page 389 it is a.s.sociated with foliage and rosettes. A typical form of it is where the blocks are charged with heraldic devices, which may serve to indicate the date, or to confuse one. In the design from Evreux on page 160 there occur, for example, the Fleurs-de-Lys of France alternating with the Castle of Castille. These particular charges occur frequently in the windows of the S. Chapelle at Paris, and in the lights from that source now in the South Kensington Museum; and they go perhaps to show that Blanche of Castille (who married Louis VIII.) gave them to the chapel, or that they were in her memory. She died in 1252. It is most improbable that the Evreux gla.s.s should belong to so early a date as that. Were it so, the occurrence of this kind of thing in such early work would only go to show that heraldic devices are as old as heraldry, and that when the glazier had a narrow light to fill he treated it as a narrow light, with a border in proportion to its width: he certainly did that at the S. Chapelle. The fact remains that this particular form of "block" border marks, as a rule, the approach of the fourteenth century.

It may be as well to remind the reader that dates and periods are only mentioned in order to save circ.u.mlocution. When the thirteenth century is mentioned, it is not meant to convey the year 1201, nor yet 1299, but the century in its prime. And, what is more, it is not meant to say that the work ascribed to that period was quite certainly and indisputably done after the year 1200 or before the year 1300, but only that it bears the mark of the century--which, from the present point of view, is the important thing. The precise and certain year in which this or that device was by exception for the first time employed, or until which by chance a practically obsolete practice survived, is interesting (if it can be ascertained) only as a question of archaeology. Anyway, a workman would rather believe the evidence of his eyes, which he can trust, than of doc.u.ments, which, even if authentic, may not be trustworthy, and which are perhaps open to misinterpretation.

Typically Decorated gla.s.s, apart from the ornamental windows just referred to, is the least interesting of Gothic. There is in it a straying from Early tradition without reaching the later freedom and attainment. In colour it has neither the strength of the Early work nor the delicacy of the Late. It marks some progress in technique, but little in design, and none in taste.

CHAPTER XVI.

LATE GOTHIC WINDOWS.

The subdivision of art into periods is in reality the veriest makeshift.

To be on quite safe ground we should have, as a matter of fact, to reduce our periods to not more than half their supposed duration, and to cla.s.s all the rest of the time as belonging to intervals of transition.

The truth is, it is always a period of transition. The stream moves perpetually on; there are only moments in its course when it seems to move more slowly, and we have time to fix its characteristics. It follows that, if we divide our periods according to time, we have to include within them work of very various character; and if we divide them according to style, our dates get hopelessly confused.

Some sort of cla.s.sification is necessary in order to emphasise changes which actually took place only by degrees, and are perceptible only to the expert. But no sooner do we begin to cla.s.sify, than we find so many exceptions, that we are inclined almost to wonder if they do not form the rule. All that has been said, therefore, and may yet be said, about the periods of design, must be taken with more than a grain of suspicion. For example, what shall be said about the great East window at Gloucester Cathedral, which Winston instances as a typical example of Decorated gla.s.s? Doubtless the technique is that of soon after the middle of the fourteenth century, and the detail of the canopies, when you come to examine them, is more nearly Decorated than anything else; but the first impression of the gla.s.s is quite that of Perpendicular work. This may come partly of the circ.u.mstances that the masonry of the window follows already distinctly Perpendicular lines; but it comes much more from the colour of the gla.s.s and its distribution. It is not merely that blue and ruby backgrounds are carried straight up through the long lengths of each alternate light, or that the blue is lighter and greyer than in Decorated gla.s.s, but that the figures, and especially the canopies, are for the first time, practically speaking, altogether in white, only very slightly relieved with yellow stain. The student who accepted this as typical Decorated work, would be quite at sea when he came to Perpendicular gla.s.s, in which this paler colour, this preponderance of white, and especially this framing of the figures in white canopy work, is a most distinctive, if not the most distinctive, feature. After all, the window is Perpendicular; and, though the gla.s.s in it may have many characteristics of Decorated work, it cannot well be said that the gla.s.s is Decorated, true though it be that gla.s.s did, as a rule, follow rather in the wake of architectural progress.

Many windows are almost equally difficult to cla.s.sify. In the Decorated gla.s.s at Wells there are both earlier and later features. The heads glazed in pinkish gla.s.s, with eyes and beards leaded up in white, strike an Early note, whilst the broadly treated bases or pedestals of certain canopies in the Lady Chapel, one of which is here shown (the canopies themselves are strictly Decorated), prelude the coming style.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 136. PEDESTAL, WELLS.]

These bases remind one of those in the ante-chapel at New College, Oxford, dating from the last quarter of the fourteenth century, which, though it is not difficult to trace in them the lingering influence of Decorated tradition, must undoubtedly be put down as early examples of the later style. In these fine windows (upon which the tourist turns his back whilst he admires the poor attempt of Sir Joshua Reynolds in the West window) there is not yet the accomplishment of full-fledged Perpendicular work. The figures, though full of fine feeling, are not well drawn, and the painting is not delicate; but the design of the gla.s.s, its setting out, the balance and arrangement of colour, the tone of the windows, and the breadth of effect, are admirable; and it is precisely in these respects that it proclaims itself of the later school of Gothic. Indeed, we may a.s.sume that it was in order to include such work as this that the line was drawn at the year 1380. To cla.s.s it with Decorated gla.s.s would have been too absurd. Compare the New College canopy on page 180 with the Decorated canopy on page 155 and the more orthodox Perpendicular canopies below and on pages 185, 340, and there is no possible hesitation as to which it most resembles. The only thing in which it shows any leaning towards Decorated work is in the very occasional introduction of pot-metal colour; and the main thing in which it differs from later Perpendicular design is that its shafts are round instead of square, and that it is more solidly built up, larger, more n.o.bly conceived.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 137. CANOPY, NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD.]

A parallel French instance is at the S. Chapelle at Riom, in which canopies, having at first sight all the appearance of typically Late Gothic work, prove to have details which one would rather describe as Decorated. The German canopy work at Shrewsbury (pages 183, 186) is not very far removed from Decorated. The later Perpendicular canopies run to finikin pinnacles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 138. TYPICAL PERPENDICULAR CANOPY.]

The New College canopies have none of the bra.s.sy yellow colour characteristic of Decorated work, but are absolutely silvery in effect.

The gradual dilution, as one may say, of the deep, rich, Early colour is noticeable throughout the fourteenth century. Towards its close the gla.s.s painter halts no longer between two opinions, between light and colour. He has quite made up his mind in favour of white gla.s.s. He has come pretty generally to conceive his window as a field of white, into which to introduce a certain amount of rich colour, not often a very large amount. As a rule, perhaps not more than one-fourth of the area of a fifteenth century window was colour; for, in addition to the white of the canopy, there was commonly a fair amount of white in the draperies, and the flesh was now always represented by white. The typical Perpendicular window, then, is filled with shrinework in white, enclosing figures, or figure subjects, into which white enters largely (the flesh and some of the drapery, often a good deal, is sure to be white), upon a background of colour. Not much of this coloured background, most often in blue or ruby, and sometimes deep in colour, was ordinarily shown, so fully was the s.p.a.ce occupied by figure work.

Sometimes there would be represented, behind the figure, a screen of white, so that only the head and shoulders would stand revealed against dark colour. Sometimes this screen would be in colour, contrasting with the background, richly diapered in imitation of damask (page 342).

Sometimes the background would be white, leaded perhaps in quarries; but in any case the prevalent scheme of design was to frame up pictures, more or less in colour, in architectural canopy work of white and stain.

Yellow stain, it should be said, was freely used in connection with all this white; and its invariable a.s.sociation therewith is one of the marked characteristics of Later Gothic gla.s.s; but as a rule the yellow was not only delicate in tint but delicately introduced, so that it did not much disturb the effect of white. There were significant pa.s.sages of yellow in it, but the effect of the ma.s.s was cool and silvery.

In canopies yellow stain was used as gold might be in stonework, which the canopies imitated; crockets and pinnacles would be tipped with yellow, as with gilding (see opposite), and the reveal of the arch, shown in false perspective above the figure, would be similarly stained, so as to soften the transition from the dark colour of the background to the white of the canopy ma.s.s.

One comes upon windows, probably of about the beginning of the end of the fourteenth century, in which the colour scheme is practically limited to red, white, and blue, the yellow being, comparatively speaking, lost in the white. Again, one finds windows in which the colours are much lighter than in earlier gla.s.s. But as a rule the lighter colours now introduced (the glazier's palette was by this time quite extensive) were used to support, and not to the exclusion of, the richer and deeper colour, which is the glory of gla.s.s, seldom to be dispensed with even in grisaille. You may do without colour altogether, but pale colours always have a poor effect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 139. FIGURE AND CANOPY, S. MARY'S, SHREWSBURY.]

The typical Perpendicular canopies ill.u.s.trated and already referred to are quite favourable specimens of the kind of thing in vogue throughout the fifteenth century. In France much the same forms were adopted (page 342). Some exceptionally delicate figure-and-canopy windows (or parts of them) are to be found in the cathedral at Toulouse--the figure in colour, or in white and colour, against a background of white, richly diapered with damask pattern, which quite sufficiently distinguishes it from the architecture only just touched with yellow. An instance of later German work is given below. The German designer indulged temperamentally in the interpenetration of shafting and other vagaries of the kind, which we find in German stone carving. Sometimes in German work, and occasionally also in French, Late Gothic canopies were all in yellow, framing the picture, as it were, in gold. As a rule, however, they were, as with us, silvery in tone, and framed the coloured gla.s.s in a way most absolutely satisfactory, so far as effect is concerned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 140. GERMAN LATE GOTHIC CANOPY.]

In itself, however, this canopy work is rarely of any great interest; occasionally, as already in the preceding century, the designer has enniched in the shafts little figures of saints or angels (there is just the indication of such introduction of little statuettes in the very simple and restrained example of canopy work from Cologne, on page 191), redeeming it from dulness; but as a rule it is trite and commonplace to a degree. The white, as frame, is perfect. It is none the more so that it simulates misplaced stonework. What a strange thing it is in the history of ornament that the natural bias of the designer seems to be so irresistibly towards imitation! The man's first thought seems to be to make the thing he is doing look like something it is not. Why, having designed openings in the wall of his building, he should proceed forthwith to fill them up with something in poor imitation of masonry, is a mystery. Economy had then, perhaps, as now, more to do with it than art, for it is a very cheap expedient.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 141. ALL SOULS' COLLEGE, OXFORD.]

Not only in the matter of colour, but in that of proportion, the later Gothic canopies were a great improvement upon what had gone before. They were distributed still very much upon the horizontal principle so noticeable in Decorated work; but by this time the architect had come to the tardy conclusion that the long lights of his window wanted holding together, and he tied them together, if they were of any length, by means of transoms, in which case the gla.s.s-worker had to deal with lights of manageable length. The light from All Souls' College, here given, is an example of a very usual Perpendicular arrangement. About one half its entire length is occupied by a figure enshrined, as it were, in an architectural niche. The base of the canopy is about equal in height to the width of the light. The shafts are broad enough to emphasise the independence of the light. The pinnacles of the canopy extend into the window head. A point or two of background colour, as though one could see through, are ingeniously introduced into the canopy and its base. It would be difficult to better such an arrangement of white and colour, except that one feels the urgent want of a margin of white, to separate the coloured background from the masonry round the window head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 142. TWO WINDOWS, S. MARY'S, SHREWSBURY.]

The idea is, no doubt, that the shrinework should appear to stand in the opening, and the figure be sheltered under that. The illusion aimed at, it is scarcely necessary to say, is not produced, and in any case would not have been worth producing. On the contrary, the desirable thing to be done was, to acknowledge the window opening, which, except for this pretence, the colour of the design effectually does.