Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 13

[Ill.u.s.tration: 143. FAIRFORD.]

A frequent and equally typical arrangement was, where the light was long enough, to make the base itself take the form of a low canopy over a more or less square-proportioned subject, possibly a scene in the life of the Saint pourtrayed above. This gave opportunity of introducing figures on two different scales, without in any way endangering the significance of the more important figure, which, by its size and breadth of colour, a.s.serted itself at a distance from which the smaller subject appeared only a ma.s.s of broken colour. The proportions and outline of such a subject are indicated by the Nativity on page 54, the jagged line at the top of the picture marking the inner line of the canopy work. In German work very commonly the base canopy encloses, as, for example, at Cologne Cathedral, a panel of heraldic blazonry.

The height of the canopy was, with us, more or less in accordance with the length of the window; but sometimes more s.p.a.ce was allowed for the figure than at All Souls', and the vacant s.p.a.ce about the head of the saint was occupied with a label in white and stain bearing an inscription. There are some admirable figure-and-canopy windows of this description on the north side of the choir of York Minster, which seem to have inspired a great deal of our modern mock-Perpendicular figure-and-canopy gla.s.s. The label occurs, on a background of white architecture, behind the Prophets from Fairford on pages 187, 391. A more important example of it occurs round the figure of Edward the Confessor, from S. Mary's, Ross (opposite), and again in the group from the same source on page 339. Extremely clever ornamental use is made of the label--a typically Perpendicular form of enrichment--in the German gla.s.s on page 186. The extraordinary breadth of the phylacteries held by the Prophets in the early fifteenth century windows in the S. Chapelle at Riom, gives them quite a character of their own, and an admirable one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 144. THE QUEEN OF SHEBA BEFORE SOLOMON, FAIRFORD.]

At Great Malvern we find the lights above the transom of a window occupied each by a figure and its canopy, whilst the lower lights contain each three tiers of small subjects, separated only by bands of inscription. In the four-light window at Malvern ill.u.s.trating the Days of Creation, each light contains three little subjects, one of which is given on page 252. Sometimes, as in the windows from Fairford on pages 188, 372, subjects under a canopy are drawn to a scale as large as the size of the window will allow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 145. KING EDWARD, S. MARY'S, ROSS.]

In some shape or another the canopy almost invariably appears in connection with figure work; it is the rarest thing to find, in place of the familiar shafting, a border, such as that opposite.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 146. YORK MINSTER.]

Of the gradual improvement in drawing in the fifteenth century work it is not necessary to say much. It belongs to the period rather than to gla.s.s painting, and it is shown in the examples ill.u.s.trated. It is of no particular country, though our English work was possibly more constrained than contemporary continental work. Particularly characteristic of English work was the delicate tracing of the faces, which were pencilled, in fine lines, the treatment altogether rather flat, and this at a period when foreign gla.s.s was much more solidly modelled. It is not possible, on the scale of ill.u.s.tration determined by a book of this size, to ill.u.s.trate this English peculiarity as clearly as one would wish, but it will be apparent to the seeing eye even here.

It is within the bounds of possibility that the Fairford gla.s.s may have been executed in England; if so, Flemish or German painters certainly had a hand in it. To compare it with the neighbouring Perpendicular gla.s.s at Cirencester, with its delicate tracing and fine stain (in which matter the Fairford gla.s.s does not by any means excel), is to see how very different it is from typical English work. Whether we look at the detail of the canopies, or the drawing of the drapery, or the painting of the gla.s.s, we see little to connect this with English work, though it falls at once into its place as excellent Late Gothic gla.s.s. In the windows of the nave of Cologne Cathedral, a figure from one of which is here given, German Gothic gla.s.s reaches its limit. There is already a trace, if only in the broad shaft of the canopy, of Renaissance influence in the design. In others of these windows there are no single figures. Entire lights are filled with biblical or legendary scenes, one above the other, under dwarf canopies, which do not very clearly define the horizontal divisions of the window; for all that, the horizontal divisions are for the most part there. Except where the canopies are so insignificant as not to count, a Perpendicular window presents, as a rule, a screen of silvery-white, on which the pictures form so many panels of more or less jewelled colour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 147. COLOGNE CATHEDRAL.]

The enormous East window at York Minster, which belongs to the very early years of the fifteenth century, contains, apart from its tracery, no less than a hundred and seventeen subjects in its twenty-seven lights; but the canopies dividing them are so narrow that they scarcely answer the purpose of frames to the separate subjects. The design is inextricably confused, and the subjects are very difficult to read; but the effect is still as of a ma.s.s of jewels caught in a network of white.

In fact, the progress towards light is such that, whereas in the last century the problem was how to get more and more white gla.s.s into a coloured window, it seems now more often to be how to get colour into a white one.

White and stain enter so largely into Late Gothic gla.s.s that there remains little to be said about grisaille. The gla.s.s of the period is, for the most part, in grisaille and colour, the difference between it and earlier grisaille being, that it consists so largely of figure-and-canopy work. Windows, however, do occur all in white or all in white and stain. Figures, for example, in white and stain, occur, as in the South transept at York, on a ground of delicately painted quarries. Again, a common arrangement is that of figures in white and colour against a background of quarry work, a band of inscription separating the pavement upon which they stand from quarries below them.

Such figures form a belt across many moderate-sized windows in parish churches. Mere quarry lights also occur, with a border in which perhaps some colour occurs. But the subject of quarries and quarry windows is reserved for consideration in a chapter by itself.

It must not be supposed that the drift of Later Gothic in the direction of white gla.s.s was uninterrupted. That was by no means so. At certain places, and at certain periods, and especially by certain artists, there seems to have been a reaction against this tendency, if ever there was any yielding to it. For example, notwithstanding all that has been said about the lighter tone of Decorated gla.s.s, some of the very finest fourteenth century German work, at S. Sebald's Church, Nuremberg, is as intensely and beautifully rich as anything in Early work. There rows of small subjects are framed in little canopies as deep in colour as the pictures, and white gla.s.s is conspicuous by its absence. The nearest approach to it is an opaque-looking horn colour, and that is used only very sparingly. Possibly, however, it is not quite fair to call these windows rich, for the upper part of them is light. So light is it, and so little has it to do with the stained gla.s.s, that one scarcely accepts it as part of the window, and therefore speaks of it as if it ended with the colour.

The unfortunate plan has been adopted here, as in the cathedral at Munich and elsewhere in Germany, of filling only about half the window, from the sill upwards, with strong stained gla.s.s. This ends abruptly at an arbitrary and very unsatisfactory canopy arch, which, in a way, frames it; and above it the window is filled with plain white rounds. At Freiburg there is yet a further band of plain rounds next the sill of the windows. The object of this is, doubtless, to get light into the church; but the effect is as if the builders had run short of coloured gla.s.s, and had only finished off the window temporarily. As a means of combining white and colour this German shift is not, of course, to be compared to the plan current elsewhere of distributing them in alternating bands. It does not attempt to combine them, but cuts the window deliberately in two. Not until you have shaded off from your eyes the distracting rays of white light, can you properly appreciate or enjoy the coloured gla.s.s.

But, if these windows must be considered, as in a sense they must be, as conforming to the demand for more light, there are others in which strong colour is carried consistently through, not only in the fourteenth but in the fifteenth century. (It is irritating and annoying to have to hark back in this way to periods supposed to have been long since left behind, but any arbitrary line of division between the styles must, as it were, cut off points which project from one into the other, sometimes very far indeed across the boundary line; and hence the absolute necessity, at times, of seeming to retrace our steps, if we would really trace the progress of design.) There are shown opposite four lights out of a large window in the clerestory of the cathedral at Troyes, in which the history of the Prodigal Son is pictured in little upright subjects, framed in canopies of quite modest proportions and of colour which in no wise keeps them separate from the richly coloured figures underneath. One of them, for example, is of green, very much the colour of an emerald, on an inky-purple ground. The result is a very rich window, full of quaintly dramatic interest when you come to examine it; but there are no broadly marked divisions of colour in the gla.s.s to affect the architecture of the building one way or the other, nor does it tell its tale very plainly. It is more easily read on page 194 than from the floor of the church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 148. THE PRODIGAL SON, TROYES.]

In the windows so far discussed the figure subjects, however small and however close together, have always been marked off one from the other, slightly as it might be, at first by the marginal lines round the early subject medallions, and then by canopies. It is shown in another fifteenth century window from Troyes (opposite) how even that amount of framework was now sometimes abandoned.

Progress in gla.s.s design, it was said, was in the direction of light and of picture. Moved by the double impulse, the designer of the Later Gothic period framed his coloured pictures in white. But where he happened not to care so much about light, or had not to consider it, he omitted even the narrow shaft of white or colour (which, so long as he used a canopy, usually divided the picture from the stonework) and left it to the mullions to separate them vertically. Horizontally he divided them slightly by a band of ornament, as at Troyes, of about the width of the mullions, or more frequently, and more plainly, by lines of inscription on white or yellow bands. If the subjects were arranged across the window in tiers alternately on ruby and blue grounds, that, of course, separated each somewhat from the one next above and below it, but it banded those on the same level together. This helped the architectural effect, but confused the story-telling.

If the pictures were arranged, throughout the width as well as the length of the window, alternately in panels on red and blue grounds, that kept the pictures rather more apart, but made the distribution of the colour all-overish. That mere change of ground could not keep pictures effectively separate will be clear when it is seen (opposite) how little of the background extends to the mullion. The greater part of the figures come quite up to the stonework, and the subjects consequently run together. It is difficult to realise, except by experience, how little the stonework can be depended upon to frame stained gla.s.s. It seems when you see it all upon paper that the mullions, with their strongly marked mouldings, must effectually frame the gla.s.s between them. They do nothing of the kind. They go for so much shadow: what you see is the gla.s.s. This the gla.s.s painters realised at length, and took to carrying their pictures across them. And it has to be confessed that so long as they schemed them cleverly the interference of the mullion was not much felt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 149. THE STORY OF TOBIT, TROYES.]

The distinction drawn so far between "single figures" and "subjects" has answered its obvious purpose; but that also is, in a manner, arbitrary.

Figures standing separately, each in a light by itself, form very often a series--such as the four Evangelists, the twelve Apostles, the Prophets, the Doctors of the Church, or a succession of kings, bishops, or other ecclesiastics. More than that, they form perhaps a group. When we discover that facing the figure of the Virgin Mary is that of the Angel Gabriel, we see at once that, though each figure occupies a separate light of the window, and each stands in its own separate niche, we have in reality here a subject extending through two lights--the Annunciation. So in a four-light window--if in one light stands the Virgin with the Infant Christ, and in the others a series of richly garbed figures with crowns and gifts in their hands, it is clear that this represents the Adoration of the Magi--a subject in four lights; and the canopies over them may be taken to be one canopy with four niches. A yet more familiar instance of continuity between the single figures in the lights of a window occurs where the central light contains the Christ upon the cross, and in the sidelights stand the Virgin and S.

John. We have in such cases the beginning of the subject extending through several lights. It is only a short step from the Annunciation, or the Adoration, or the Crucifixion described, to the same subject, under one canopy, extending boldly across the window, with shafts only to frame the picture at its sides. That is what was done--especially in Germany. It occurs already in Early Decorated gla.s.s, where the upper part of a big geometric window is sometimes occupied by bra.s.sy pinnacle work, which a.s.serts itself, perhaps, upon a ground of mosaic diaper, in the most unpleasant way. In the white gla.s.s of a later period the effect was happier.

At first the designer did not, as a rule, aspire to carry his subjects right across a big window. Accepting the transom as a natural division, he would perhaps divide a four-light window vertically into two, so as to get four subjects, each under a canopy extending across two lights; or, in a five-light window, he would probably separate these by other narrow subjects in the central lights. Divisions of this kind often occur already in the stonework of the window, the lights being architecturally divided by stronger mullions into groups. In that case all the gla.s.s painter does is to emphasise the grouping of the lights schemed by the architect. Where the architect has not provided for such grouping he does it, perhaps, for himself. It enables him to design his figures on a larger scale, and to get a much broader effect in his gla.s.s than he could do so long as he kept each picture rigorously within the limits of a single light. Consideration for his picture had probably more to do with his reticence than respect for its architectural framework; and so soon as ever he realised how little even a strong mullion would really interfere with his work, he made no scruple to take all the s.p.a.ce he wanted for his purpose. Infinite variety of composition is the result. The upper half of the window is perhaps devoted to a single subject, or to two important pictures, whilst below the transom the lights are broken up into quite little pictures; or in place of these smaller pictures may be found little panels of heraldry, as occurs often in Flemish work. These or the smaller pictures may be continued in the sidelights of a broad window, flanking, and in a way framing, a large central picture. Sometimes, as in the nave of Cologne Cathedral, the upper half of the window may contain one imposing composition; below that may be a series of important single figures, each provided with its separate canopy; and below that again, at the base of the window, may be a series, or several series, of small heraldic panels.

The canopy extending across a broad window (page 200) may be so schemed that there is obvious recognition of the lights into which it is divided, or it may sprawl across the window s.p.a.ce with as little regard to intervening mullions as possible. There is now, in short, full scope for the fancy of the artist, were he never so fanciful; and it would be a hopeless task to try and catalogue the lines on which the design of a large window might now be set out.

We do not in the fifteenth century arrive yet at the most remarkable achievements in gla.s.s painting. But you have only to compare such pictures as those on pages 194, 196, with that on page 127 to see what a complete revolution has come over the spirit of design. It is not only that the draughtsman has learnt to draw, and the painter to paint; they work on quite a different system. It was explained (page 44) how in early days the glazier conceived his design as mosaic, how he first thought it out in lead lines, and only relied on paint to help him out in details which glazing could not give him. Now, it is easy to see that the painter begins at the other end. He thinks out his picture as a painting, and relies upon glazing only for the colour which he cannot get without it.

In the beginning, it was said, the glazier might often have fixed his lead lines, and trusted to his ingenuity to fill them in with painted detail. Now, it would seem, the painter might almost have sketched his picture, and then bethought him how to glaze it. But that is not yet really so. He did not even conceive his design as a picture and then translate it into gla.s.s. His work runs so smoothly it cannot be translation. The ingenuity with which he leads up little bits of colour in the midst of white, is no mere feat of engineering; it is spontaneous. It is clear that he had the thought of glazing in his mind all along--that he designed for it, in fact. The difference between the thirteenth century and the fifteenth century designer is, that one thinks first of glazing, is primarily a glazier, the other thinks first of painting, is primarily a painter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 150. FAIRFORD.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 151. RENAISSANCE WINDOW, TROYES CATHEDRAL.]

CHAPTER XVII.

SIXTEENTH CENTURY WINDOWS.

The customary line between Gothic and Renaissance gla.s.s is drawn at about A.D. 1530. That is to say, that there are to be found examples, presumably of that date, which are still undoubtedly Gothic in character. But he would be a bold man, even for an archaeologist, who dared to say precisely when the Gothic era came to an end.

Quite early in the sixteenth century the new Italian movement began to make itself felt in France, Germany, Flanders; in due course it spread to this country. Eventually it supplanted the older style; but it was only by degrees that it insinuated itself into the affections of cis-alpine craftsmen. And in stained gla.s.s, even more plainly than in wood or stone carving, is seen how gradually the new style was a.s.similated by the mediaeval craftsmen--more quickly, of course, by the younger generation than the older--so that, concurrently with design in the quasi-Italian manner, Gothic work was still being done. Much of the earlier Renaissance work shows lingering Gothic influence. In the first quarter of the sixteenth century a great deal of gla.s.s was designed and executed by men hesitating between the old love and the new, only partially emanc.i.p.ated from mediaeval tradition, or only imperfectly versed in the foreign style.

There is a window at S. Nizier, at Troyes, for example, in which the details are Renaissance, but the feeling is quite Gothic. The subjects are even explained by elaborate yellow scrolls or labels inscribed in black, very much after the manner of those which form such a feature in the German Gothic work at Shrewsbury (page 186). Renaissance forms are traced with a hand which betrays long training in the more rigid mediaeval school; and Gothic and Italian details are put together in the same composition with a _navete_ which is sometimes quite charming.

You can see that the designer of the window on page 203 was not untouched by Renaissance influence. Possibly he thought the hybrid ornament in his canopy was quite up to date.

In the gla.s.s in the nave of Cologne Cathedral the suspicion aroused by the side columns of the otherwise quite Gothic canopy on page 191 is confirmed by definitely Renaissance forms in the ornament in the window head. Again, at the Church of S. Peter, at Cologne, is a sort of pointed canopy with ornament which looks at first like Gothic crockets, but on nearer view it is just Italian arabesque in white and stain. Apart from architectural accessories and detail of costume or ornament, to justify the attribution of the work to this or that period, it is very often difficult to give a name to early Renaissance work; the only safe refuge is in the convenient word transitional.

But for the nimbus in perspective, and the shield of arms and its little amorino supporter, it would have seemed safe to describe the "Charge to S. Peter" from S. Vincent at Rouen on page 207 as "Gothic."

In French gla.s.s a lingering Gothic element is noticeable at a period when Italian forms had firmly established themselves in contemporary plastic art; but, then, gla.s.s painting was not an Italian art; and, whilst wood carvers and sculptors were imported from Italy, and directly influenced the Frenchmen working with them, gla.s.s painting remained in the hands of native artists.

Before very long the Renaissance did, of course, a.s.sert itself, in gla.s.s painting as in all art, and we arrive at windows absolutely different from anything that was done in the Middle Ages. The change was in some places much more rapid than in others. Wherever there was a strong man his influence would make for or against it. But meanwhile much intermediate work was done, belonging more or less to the new school, whilst retaining very much of the character of Gothic gla.s.s.

That Gothic character was something well worth keeping; for it is the character which belongs inherently to the material.

The Gothic gla.s.s painters did, in fact, so thoroughly develop the resources of the material, that a Renaissance window treated really like gla.s.s inevitably suggests the lingering of Gothic tradition. This is no slight praise of Gothic work; and, by implication, it tells against the later Renaissance gla.s.s painters, whose triumphs were in a direction somewhat apart from their craft. The great windows at Brussels, for example (page 71), ill.u.s.trate a new departure. They seem to have nothing in common with mediaeval art. On the other hand, one traces the descent of such masterpieces of translucent gla.s.s painting as are to be found at Arezzo (page 397), through those same intermediate efforts, directly to Gothic sources.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 152. ST. MARY'S, SHREWSBURY.]

To trace the steps by which the new encroached upon the old, as one may do, for example, at Rouen, is almost to come to the conclusion that the short but brilliant period of Renaissance gla.s.s painting is really the after-fruit of Gothic tradition, fertilised only by the great flood of Renaissance feeling which swept over sixteenth century art. Nowhere is this more clearly argued than in the windows at Auch, completed, according to all accounts, as early as 1513. A strain of Gothic is betrayed by the cusping which here and there fringes a semicircular canopy arch; but no less mistakably mediaeval is the technique throughout, and equally so the setting out of the windows. For the somewhat imposing canopies are not, for once, devised as frames to correspondingly important pictures; but are simply shrines adorned with figures each confined to its separate light: it is only the small subsidiary predella or other such pictures which extend beyond the mullions. No doubt there is doctrinal intention in the juxtaposition of Prophets, Sibyls, and the rest--one of whom may even be supposed to be addressing the other--but to all intents and purposes decorative, they are just a row of standing figures, as distinct one from the other as the usual series of figures under quite separate canopies. It is only the canopy which connects them. This kind of composition (which is seen again at Troyes, page 200) would never have occurred to a man altogether cut off from Gothic tradition.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 153. CHAPEL OF THE BOURBONS, LYONS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 154. S. G.o.dARD, ROUEN.]

It is worth remarking that, even when Gothic and Renaissance canopies alternate at Auch in a single window, or where Gothic niches are built, as it were, into or on to larger Renaissance structures, there is no appearance of incongruity. Truth to tell, the Gothic is not so purely Gothic, nor the Renaissance so purely Renaissance, as that they should clash one with the other. Both are seen through the temperament of the artist. He mixed them in his mind; and the result is quite one, _his_ style in short.