Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 14

Early Renaissance gla.s.s submitted itself, one can hardly say duly, but almost as readily as late Gothic design, to the restraint of Gothic mullions. The windows in which, as it happens, some of the best Early French Renaissance work is found (and it is in France that the best is to be found) are often smaller than the great Perpendicular windows referred to, and do not lend themselves to such elaborate subdivision.

But the lines on which they are subdivided are very much as heretofore.

The canopy still extends through several lights, and covers a single subject. Only now it is Renaissance in design. That does not mean to say merely that round arched architecture takes the place of pointed. The round arch occurs indeed, as in the windows in the Chapel of the Bourbons, in Lyons Cathedral (on pages 204 and 349), supplemented by amorini and festoons of fruit. But more often the canopy takes the form of a frieze of Renaissance ornament, painted in white and stain, as at S. G.o.dard, Rouen (opposite), or glazed in white on colour, as in the cathedral of the same city (pages 75, 350), supported at each end by a pilaster. Not seldom it resolves itself into arabesque only very remotely connected with architecture at all. Indeed, if it simulate anything, it is goldsmith's work rather than masonry. Executed, as at Rouen (pages 75, 206), in brilliant yellow on a dark coloured ground, it has very much the appearance and value of beaten gold. That, rather than sculpture, must have been in the mind of the designer. One form of imitation is not much better than another; but here, at all events, there is nothing which in the least competes with the surrounding architecture; and it will scarcely be denied by any one who takes the least interest in ornament, that design of this kind is vastly more amusing than the dull array of misplaced pinnacles which often did duty for ornamental detail in Gothic shrinework. A German version of a canopy which ceases almost to be a canopy and becomes more like arabesque, is given on page 350. That is supported by columns (the caps are shown in the ill.u.s.tration) rather out of keeping with the ornament they support, which makes very little pretence of being architectural. The canopies on pages 204, 350, are supported only on little brackets at each side, and have no shafts at all. This marks a new departure. The picture has now no frame at its sides, only the stone mullion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 155. S. PATRICE, ROUEN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 156. SUBJECT, S. VINCENT, ROUEN, 1525.]

It was explained, in reference to glazing, what confusion of detail resulted from the use of leads of which some were intended to form part of the design and some not. Similar confusion is inevitable when certain of the mullions are meant to be accepted as frame to the picture and others to be ignored. The perhaps not very conspicuous canopy is often the only hint as to which of the stone divisions you are to accept as such, and which not. Even that was not always there to serve as a guide.

Already, as early as 1525, the date given to the window ill.u.s.trating the life of S. Peter (page 207), the canopy was sometimes annulled, and the window given over entirely to picture, either one complete subject or a series of smaller ones. The window dedicated to S. Peter contains in its four lights eight equal subjects, a plan adopted in several others of the windows at S. Vincent, Rouen. In a series of unframed subjects, such as these, there is much less danger of confusion should some one prominent figure recur throughout always in the same costume.

That is the case here, and again at Chalons, where the figure of Our Lord, robed in purple, is conspicuous throughout: the mind grasps at a glance that this is not one picture but a series.

A change of period is indicated by the departure from the disc-shaped nimbus. On pages 207, 210, 234, 397, the nimbus is shown in perspective; an attempt is even made to make it hover above the head, an effect not possible to produce in leaded gla.s.s; even at Arezzo it is not achieved.

Neither is the use of a mere ring of light, whether in flat or in perspective, a happy subst.i.tution for the Gothic colour disc, as may be seen, for example, at Cologne. The idea of the nimbus only keeps within the border line which separates the sublime from the ridiculous, so long as the thing is frankly accepted as a symbol, not as an effect. But, were it otherwise, the use of the strongly marked disc of colour about the head of prominent personages has an enormous value as a means of distinguishing them from the background or from surrounding figures. Its decorative importance is no less than its symbolic. Very especially is this so in gla.s.s; and the gla.s.s painter who wantonly departs from its use, reduces it to a mere ring (which does not separate it at all from the background) or poises it in the air, is beginning to wander from the way, narrow if you please, which leads to success in gla.s.s. This is said with some reluctance in face of the all but perfect little panel from S.

Bonnet, at Bourges, on page 210. It is true that there the nimbus of the boy saint, though in perspective, does by its dark tone separate the head from the light ground, as the face is separated from the darker drapery of his teacher; and, in so far, little of definition is sacrificed; but, after all, admirably as the design is schemed, the oval nimbus is not a whit less conventional than the round disc of mediaeval times, and it does lack something of distinction and dignity which that conveyed. The date inscribed (1544) serves to remind us that we are nearing the middle of the century, at which period gla.s.s painting may safely be said to have reached its zenith and to be nearing the verge of decline.

It will have been seen in the examples lately instanced how story is gradually more and more naturally set forth in gla.s.s. There is now no vestige of flat treatment left. Even the standing figure (page 191) stands forth from his niche, and though he may be backed by a curtain of damask, there is shown above that a background of receding architecture.

So in the S. Bernard windows at Shrewsbury (pages 56, 203) there is architectural distance shown in perspective, and again in the subjects from Fairford, whether it be the portcullised gate of Jerusalem that is represented (page 251), or the very inadequate palace of King Solomon (page 188), or the Garden of Eden, in which the scene of the Temptation is primitively pourtrayed (page 372), there is some attempt to render the scene. Even in the fifteenth century work at Troyes (page 194) the Prodigal is not merely shown among the swine, joining them in a dinner of gigantic acorns, but he leans against an oak tree, and in the distance is a little forest of trees. In Renaissance gla.s.s the scene is much more naturally rendered, and forms almost invariably an important part of the composition. Witness the palace of Herod (page 74) when Salome dances before him, which is a great advance upon the Gothic throne-room of King Solomon (page 188).

[Ill.u.s.tration: 157. SUBJECT, S. BONNET, BOURGES.]

The scene takes one of three forms: either it is architectural, or it is landscape, or it is of architecture and landscape combined. A very favourite plan of the French was to show distant architecture (glazed in deep purple) through which were seen glimpses of grey sky, and perhaps a peep of landscape; and it resulted invariably in a beautiful effect of colour. In fact, a scheme of colour which recurs again and again at Rouen, and in other French gla.s.s of the first part of the sixteenth century, consists in the introduction of figures in rich colour and white upon a background where white, green, purple, and pale blue predominate to such an extent as to give quite a distinctive character to the gla.s.s. The more distant landscape was painted very delicately upon the pale grey-blue gla.s.s which served for sky, as shown on page 255, and in the same way architecture was also painted upon it. In the view through the arches above the screen in a window at Montmorency (page 213), both trees and buildings are represented in that way upon pale grey gla.s.s, the green of the trees and hills stained upon it.

Sometimes the distance is painted upon white, as at King's College, Cambridge; but in France the pale grey-blue background is so usual as to be quite characteristic of the period. All this is a long way from the mere diaper of clouds which in the early fifteenth century sometimes took the place of damask pattern upon the blue which formed a background to the Crucifixion, or other scene out of doors. It is now no longer a case of symbolising, but of representing, the sky, and it is wonderful what atmospheric quality is obtained by the judicious use of pale blue painted with the requisite delicacy. The beauty of this kind of work, especially on a small scale, is beyond dispute. Together with the rendering of the flesh, it implies consummate skill in painting. The painter comes quite to the front; but he justifies himself inasmuch as he is able to hold the place. He does what his Gothic predecessors could not have done, and does it perfectly. Could the Gothic artist have painted like this, he also might have been tempted so far in the pictorial direction as to have sacrificed some of the sterner qualities of his design.

The architectural environment of the figures on page 213 fulfils somewhat the function of the Perpendicular canopy; it forms a kind of setting of white for the colour; but, in the first place, it does not pretend to frame them at the side, and, in the second, the attempt at actual perspective necessitates an amount of shading upon the white gla.s.s which detracts at once from its purity and from its value as setting to the colour. The idea is there that you see through the window into s.p.a.ce; and, though that effect is never obtained, it is wonderful how far some of the gla.s.s painters later in the century went towards illusion. A certain false air of truth was sometimes given to the would-be deception by an acknowledgment of the window-shape--that is, by making the foremost arch or arches follow the shape of the window head, and form, as it were, a canopy losing itself in perspective.

Architecture proper to the subject, or not too inappropriate to it, is sometimes schemed so far to accommodate itself to the window-shape as to form, with the white pavement, a more or less canopy-like setting for the figures. It may be a sort of proscenium, the sides of which recede into the picture, and form what may be called the scenery. At King's College, Cambridge, Esau is seen bargaining away his birthright at a table where stands the coveted pottage, in the midst of s.p.a.cious halls going back into distant vistas, seen through a sort of canopy next the actual stonework. That concession to the framework of the window does mend matters somewhat. The base of the picture opposite, for example, is much more satisfactory than it would have been had it not acknowledged the window-sill; but the architecture in the top part of the lights is not a frame to the picture at all, nor yet a finish to the gla.s.s: it is part of the picture, which thus, you may say, occupies the window as a picture its canvas. In reality that is not quite so. There is some acknowledgment, though inadequate, of the spring of the arch by a horizontal cornice parallel with the bar; and the arcading, though interrupted by the mullion and by the marble columns, steadies the design; and altogether the architecture is planned with ingenuity, though without frank enough acceptance of the window-shape. One would be more tolerant to such misguided freedom of design were it not for the kind of thing it led to. It must be admitted that both French and Flemings, until they began to force their perspective, and to paint shadow heavily, did very beautiful and effective work in this way.

A mult.i.tude of figures, as, for example, in the Judgment of Solomon at S. Gervais, Paris, more or less in rich colour, could be held together by distant architecture and foreground pavement largely consisting of white gla.s.s, in a way which left little to be desired, except fuller acknowledgment of the stonework. But it took a master of design to do it, and one with a fine sense of breadth and architectural fitness.

When such architecture was kept so light as to have the full value of white, and when the figures against it were also to a large extent in white, and the colour was introduced only in little patches and jewels skilfully designed to form, here the sleeves of a white-robed figure, there a headdress, there again the glimpse of an underskirt, and so on--all ingeniously designed for the express purpose of introducing rich colour, the whole shot through with golden stain--the effect is sometimes very beautiful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 158. SAINTS, CH. OF S. MARTIN, MONTMORENCY.]

Admirable Flemish work, Renaissance in detail, but carrying on the traditions of Gothic art, is to be found in plenty at Liege, both in the cathedral (1530 to 1557) and at S. Martin. This is excellent in drawing and composition, most highly finished in painting, fine in colour, and silvery as to its white gla.s.s, which last is splendidly stained. In the same city there is beautiful work also at S. Jacques, with admirable treatment of the canopy on a large scale. It differs from French work inasmuch as it is Flemish, just as the gla.s.s at the church of Brou differs in that there is a characteristic Burgundian flavour about it; but those are details of locality, which do not especially affect the course of gla.s.s painting, and which it would be out of place here to discuss.

In England we are not rich in Renaissance gla.s.s. The best we have is Flemish, from Herkenrode, now in the cathedral at Lichfield. The greater part of this is collected in seven windows of the Lady Chapel--no need to explain which; the miserable shields of arms in the remaining two convict themselves of modernity. In the tracery, too, there is some old gla.s.s, but it is lost in the glare of new glazing adjacent. Otherwise this gla.s.s is not much hurt by restoration. Four of the windows are treated much alike; that is, they have each three subjects, extending each across the three lights of which they are composed, some with enclosing canopy, and some without. A fifth three-light window is broken up into six tiers of subjects, each of which appears at first sight as if it were confined to the limits of a single light, but there is in fact connection between the figures; for example, of three figures the central one proves to be the Patron Saint of the Donor, himself occupying one of the sidelights, and his wife the other. If the Saint is seated the Donors stand. If he is represented standing they kneel before him. The two larger six-light windows at Lichfield are divided each into four; that is to say, the four quarters of the window have each a separate subject which extends laterally through three lights, and in depth occupies with its canopy about half the entire height of the window.

The Lichfield gla.s.s has very much the character of that at Liege. So has the Flemish gla.s.s now at the east end of S. George's, Hanover Square, a church famous for its fashionable weddings. This is some of the best gla.s.s in London, well worthy the attention of the guests pending the arrival of the bride. The design, however, is calculated to mystify the student, until he becomes aware that the lights form part of a "Tree of Jesse," adapted, not very intelligently, to their present position, and marred by hideous restoration, such as the patch of excruciating blue in the robe of the Virgin. The vine, executed in stain upon white, with grapes in pot-metal purples, is not nearly strong enough to support the figures; this may be in part due to the decay of the paint, which has proceeded apace.

Again, at Chantilly (page 218) may be seen how lead lines quarrel with delicate painting. The more delicate the painting, the greater the danger of that--a danger seldom altogether overcome.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 159. S. GEORGE'S, HANOVER SQUARE, LONDON.]

The most important series of Renaissance windows in this country is in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. "Indentures" still remain to tell us that these were contracted for in 1516 and 1526. Apart from some strikingly English-looking figures in white and stain upon quarry backgrounds in a side chapel, and other remains of similar character, and from a very beautiful window almost opposite the door by which one enters--differing in type, in scale, in colour, altogether from the other windows--the gla.s.s throughout the huge chapel was obviously planned at the time of the first contract, and there is a certain symmetry of arrangement throughout which bespeaks the period of transition. The windows consist each of two tiers of five lights. A five-light window offers some difficulty to the designer if he desire (as in the sixteenth century he naturally did) to introduce subjects extending across more than one light. A subject in two lights does not symmetrically balance with a subject in three. He might carry his subject right across the window, but that might give him very likely a larger s.p.a.ce to fill than he wanted; and besides, the time was hardly come for him to think of that. He might carry it across the central group of three; but that would leave him a single light on each side to dispose of. Remains the idea of a subject in two lights at each side of the window, and a central composition occupying only one light. That was not a very usual plan, although it was adopted, at Fairford for example, where the side subjects in two lights under a canopy are effectually separated by a central subject which has none. At King's the sidelights have no canopies further than such as may be accepted as part of the architecture proper to the subject, schemed more or less to frame the picture (as in the case of the window at Montmorency, page 213); it is only in the centre lights that the figures (two in each light, one above the other) are enclosed in canopy work. These figures (described as "messengers"), with elaborately flowing scrolls about them inscribed with texts of Scripture, are many of them quite Gothic in character, even though they have Renaissance canopies over them. The designs of these mostly do duty many times over, as if this merely decorative or descriptive work were not of much account; and the same figure occurs, here well painted, there ill done, or painted perhaps in a late, loose way, quite out of keeping with the drawing: there is no sort of sequence in them. The notion of these intermediate figures, at once distinguishing the subjects one from the other, and throwing light upon their meaning, is good. But in effect it fails of its object, thanks to the independent spirit of the later painters, who thought more of their pictures than of architectural restraint.

The subjects on each side of the window are very large in scale, very pictorially and very freely treated, very finely designed at times, and very splendid in effect; but they are most unequal, and they are all more or less of a tangle. Their confusion is the greater inasmuch as there is no attempt to balance one picture with another. A landscape background on one side of the window answers to an architectural background on the other. On one side the interest of the subject is towards the top of the lights, on the other to the bottom, and so on.

Either subject or both may be so merged with the "messengers" that a casual observer would hardly be aware of the existence of such personages.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 160. THE STORY OF PSYCHE, CHANTILLY.]

All this makes it difficult to trace the subject; and yet the windows are in a certain pictorial way the more effective. In fact the unity of the _window_ has been preserved: the white landscape on one side, and the white architecture on the other, make equally a setting for the colour, and form, with the "messengers" and their little canopies, _one_ framing, not several frames. Right or wrong, the artist has done what he meant to do, and done it oftentimes very cleverly, though not with uniform success. The inequality spoken of is not only in workmanship but in design. Some of these pictures have characteristics, such as the needless evasion of leading, which one a.s.sociates rather with quite the end of the century than with anything like the date of the second contract: possibly the execution of the work extended over a longer period of time than is generally supposed. However that may be, the windows generally, remarkable as they are, are not markedly enough of a period to serve as an object lesson in gla.s.s design. They are neither quite late enough to ill.u.s.trate the decline of art, nor workmanlike enough to show the culmination of sixteenth century design--painter-like and pictorial, but in which the designer knew how to make the most of the gla.s.s in which it was to be wrought.

That is best seen in some of the French and Flemish work above referred to, in the work, for example, at Ecouen and Montmorency, so fully ill.u.s.trated in Monsieur Magne's most admirable monograph. The figure, for example, of William of Montmorency (page 66), the father of the great Anne, might serve for a votive picture of the period; but it is designed, nevertheless, as only a man careful of the conditions under which gla.s.s painting was done could design. Careful of conditions! That is just what the designers of the King's College gla.s.s were not, or not enough. And so begins the end.

CHAPTER XVIII.

LATER RENAISSANCE WINDOWS.

The magnificent windows of Van Orley at S. Gudule, Brussels, mark in a sense the summit of design, as well as of painting, in stained gla.s.s.

But it is design of a kind not strictly proper to the material, for which reason the discussion of his work, though it was done well within the first half of the sixteenth century, has been reserved by way of introduction to the period which it inaugurated, the period when the gla.s.s painter not merely put painting first of all, but sacrificed to it qualities peculiar to gla.s.s.

The heavy painting of this work and much that followed it has already been discussed. But something of that was perhaps implied in the very ideal of the painter; the execution only follows out the scheme of the design. The scope as well as the power of the designer is better ill.u.s.trated in the two great transept windows, than in those of the chapel of the Holy Sacrament. Even in the very inadequate rendering of the one of them on page 71 may be seen how large and dignified the man's conception was. The effect is gorgeous; but it is produced as simply, for all the unsurpa.s.sed elaboration of ornamental detail, as a Goth could wish. An unsophisticated designer of the thirteenth century could scarcely have gone more directly to work. He would not have grouped his figures with such art, but he would have separated each from the other and from the ground in much such a straightforward way. Yet the _motif_ of the design, the idea of making figures and architecture stand as it were in strong and round relief against the light, went far to bring about excessive use of paint; and the design is therefore in a measure at fault, as was the later Netherlandish work, founded upon it, of which it may be taken as the n.o.bler type.

It is a far cry from the slender Perpendicular canopy to this triumphal arch. The architecture is here no frame to the picture, but the backbone of the picture itself, and it is disposed in the most masterly way. It takes the place of a magnificent high altar. Sometimes in compositions of this kind the altar-like canopy enshrines a rich picture, just as veritable stonework might frame a painted altar-piece, whilst in the foreground kneel the Donors. In this case Charles the Fifth and his wife Isabella and their attendant saints are the picture, the object of their adoration, the Almighty, being relegated to one of the side arches.

Similarly in a three-light window (of much more gla.s.sy character, however) at Montmorency, Guy de Laval has the central position, and the crucifix before which he kneels is put on one side. This is rather characteristic of the period. In the sixteenth century windows were erected, not so much to the glory of G.o.d, as to the glorification of the Donor, who claimed a foremost, if not the very central, place for himself.

The donor was no doubt always, as to this day, an important person in connection with the putting up of a stained gla.s.s window. But in early days he was content to efface himself, or if he appeared upon the scene at all it was in miniature, modestly presenting the little image of his gift in a lower corner of the window. In the fourteenth century he is still content with the s.p.a.ce of a small panel, bearing his effigy or his arms, at the base of the window. Even in the fifteenth he is content at times to be represented by his patron saint, as in the beautiful window in the chapel of Jacques Coeur, at Bourges. In the sixteenth he is very much in evidence. No scruple of modesty, or suspicion of unworthiness, restrains him from putting in an appearance in the midst of the most serious and sacred scenes, very much sometimes to the confusion of the story. Eventually the donor, his wife, and perhaps his family, with their patron saints, who literally back them up in their obtrusiveness, claim, if they do not absorb, all our attention, and the sacred subject takes quite a back place. In the foreground of the scene of the Last Judgment which occupies the great west window at S. Gudule, Brussels, kneels the donor, with attendant angels, on a scale much larger than the rest of the world, competing in fact in importance with the figure of Our Lord in Majesty above.

However, the vain-glory of princes and seigneurs resulted in the production of works of such consummate art that, as artists, we can but be grateful to them. In the presence of the splendid achievement of Van Orley, who shall say that the artist does not justify himself? Nothing equal to it _in its way_ was ever done.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 161. THE PARABLE OF THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN, GOUDA.]

It may not be according to the strict rules of the game: it is not; but that it is magnificent, no fair-minded artist can deny. Our just cause of quarrel is, not with that, but with what that led to, what that became in less competent hands. It is the price we pay for strong men that they induce weak ones to follow them in a direction where they are bound to fail. Van Orley's triumphant answer to any carping of ours would be, to point to the great west window of the cathedral, designed on earlier and more orthodox lines, and say: "Compare!" We have no right to limit art to what small folk can do.

The further development of the Netherlandish canopy is shown in the Gouda gla.s.s above. Here is still considerable skill in the way in which the window is set out, and the patches of colour are introduced (for example, in the two figures leaning on the balcony and the wreath of leaves and fruit above them) amidst the predominant white,--if only the white gla.s.s had been whiter in effect. But there is altogether too much of this architectural work, even though it is used, in the pictured parable at least, to dramatic purpose. The notion of the Pharisee gesticulating away in the far distance, whilst the Publican modestly fills the foreground, is cleverly conceived and skilfully carried out; but the picture is overpowered by its ponderous frame.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 162. GOUDA, 1596.]

It is in the wonderful series of late sixteenth century windows at Gouda, in Holland, that the fullest and furthest development of pictorial design is shown. The period of their execution extends from 1555 to 1603; and, as they are admittedly the finest works of their day, they may be taken to represent the best work of the latter half of the sixteenth century. They are, in fact, typical of the period, only at its best; it is not often that work of that date was designed with such power or painted with such skill. The diagrams given here and on pages 79, 244, 258, do no manner of justice to the gla.s.s; but they will help the reader better to understand what is said concerning it. They indicate at least the lines on which these daring designers planned their huge windows, the main lines which pictorial design on a large scale is destined henceforth to take.

In the clerestory of S. Eustache, Paris, are some large two-light windows which somewhat recall the Gouda work; but the design is rather original. One vast architectural composition in white, not very heavily painted, fills the window, against which stand a series of giant Apostles in colour, one in each light, occupying about one-third of the height of the window. This much recognition of the separate openings is something to be thankful for towards the middle of the seventeenth century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 163. S. SEBALD'S, NUREMBERG.]

A striking feature, we have seen, about the later Renaissance canopy as shown at Gouda, and already at Brussels, is its vast dimensions. It no longer frames the picture: it is a prominent, sometimes the most prominent, feature in its design.

Even earlier than that the canopy was already sometimes of very considerable extent. At S. Sebald's, Nuremberg, there is a great altar-like canopy ending in a pediment about two-thirds of the way up the window, with plain white gla.s.s above, in which the shafting at the side takes up practically the entire width of the two outer lights, as here shown in the diagram of a portion of the gla.s.s. Yet this window is as early as the year 1515, and before the period when ma.s.ses of deep shadow were represented by paint. Accordingly the canopy in this instance is glazed in pot-metal of steely grey-blue, which, with the little figures, mainly in steely grey armour against a white ground, and the heraldic shields at the side, mainly in red and white, all very slightly shaded, has a singularly fresh, bright, and delicate effect.

Another instance of preponderating architectural work occurs also at Nuremberg in the choir of the church of S. Lorenz, and though it belongs to the beginning of the seventeenth century, that too is leaded up much as it might have been in the fifteenth. But the great clumsy column, opposite, with its clumsier figure of Fame, against a ruby background extending right up to the stonework of the window, is not a satisfactory filling to the outer light of a big window.

The last thing to expect of late Renaissance work is modesty in the use of architectural accessories, whether in the form of frame or background. Frame and background they are not; they claim to be all or nothing. Just as ornamental design was gradually pushed out of use by figure work, so the picture was in time overpowered by its frame. And the frame was in the end such that, when it came to be discarded, it was not much loss.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 164. S. LORENZ, NUREMBERG.]

In the latter half of the sixteenth century and thenceforward design continued to travel in the direction of what was meant for a sort of realism. If the more or less altar-like canopy was retained, it was meant to appear as if it stood bodily under the arch of the window; if it was abandoned, you were supposed to see more or less _through_ the window, perhaps into distant country, perhaps into receding aisles of the church.