Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 2

One more source, at least, there was at which the early glazier drew inspiration--namely, the art of jewel setting. Coloured gla.s.s, as was said a while ago, was itself probably first made only in imitation of precious stones, and, being made in small pieces, it had to be set somewhat in the manner of jewellery. In all probability the enameller himself wrought at first only in imitation of jewellery, and afterwards in emulation with it.

Just as white gla.s.s was called crystal, and no doubt pa.s.sed for it, so coloured gla.s.s actually went by the name of ruby, sapphire, emerald, and so on. It is recorded even (falsely, of course) how sapphires were ground to powder and mixed with gla.s.s to give it its deep blue colour; indeed, this wilful confusion of terms goes far to explain the mystery of the monster jewels of which we read in history or the fable which not so very long ago pa.s.sed for it. Stories of diamond thrones and emerald tables seem to lead straight into fairyland; but the gla.s.s-worker explains such fancies, and brings us back again to reality.

Bearing in mind, then, the preciousness of gla.s.s, and the well-kept secrecy with regard to its composition, it is not beyond the bounds of supposition that the glazier of the dark ages not only intended deliberately to imitate jewellery, but meant that his gla.s.s should pa.s.s with the ignorant (we forget how very ignorant the ma.s.ses were) for veritably precious stones.

Even though we exempt glaziers from all charge of trickery, it was inevitable that they should attempt to rival the work of the jeweller, and to do in large what he had done only in small. That certainly they did, and with such success that, even when it comes to gla.s.s of the twelfth, and, indeed, of the thirteenth century, when already pictorial considerations begin to enter the mind of the artist, the resemblance is unmistakable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 9. ARAB GLAZING IN PLASTER.]

Try to describe the effect of an early mosaic window, and you are compelled to liken it to jewellery. Jewelled is the only term which expresses it. And the earlier it is the more jewel-like it is in effect.

So long as the workman looked upon his gla.s.s as a species of jewellery, it followed, as a matter of course, from the very estimation in which he held his material, that he did not think of obscuring it by paint--defiling it, as he would have held. It is not so much that he would have been ashamed to depend on the painter to put his colour right, as that the thought of such a thing never entered his mind; he was a glazier. It was the painter first thought of that, and his time had not yet come.

Possibly it may have occurred to the reader, _apropos_ of the diagram on page 10, in which it was shown how far the glazier could go towards the production of a map in gla.s.s, that that was not far. Certainly he does not go very far towards making a chart of any geographical value, but he does go a long way towards making a window; for the first and foremost qualities in coloured gla.s.s are colour and translucency--and for translucent colour the glazier, after the gla.s.s-maker, is alone responsible. It is in some respects very much to be deplored that the Gothic craftsman so early took to the use of supplementary painting, which in the end diverted his attention from a possible development of his craft in a direction not only natural to it but big with possibilities never to this day realised.

Of richly jewelled Gothic gla.s.s all innocent of paint, no single window remains to us; but there are fairly numerous examples extant of pattern windows glazed in white gla.s.s, whether in obedience to the Cistercian rule which forbade colour, or with a view to letting light into the churches--and it is to churches, prevalent as domestic gla.s.s may once have been, we must now go for our Gothic windows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 10. GLAZING IN PLASTER, SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM.]

Some of this white pattern work is ascribed to a period almost as early as that of any gla.s.s we know; but it is almost impossible to speak positively as to the date of anything so extremely simple in its execution; in which there is no technique of painting to tell tales; and which, when once "storied" windows came into fashion, was probably left to the tender mercies of lesser craftsmen, who may not have disdained to save themselves the trouble of design, and to repeat the old, old patterns.

The earlier glazier, it was said, painted, figuratively speaking, in gla.s.s. It is scarcely a figure of speech to say that he drew in leadwork.

This mode of draughtsmanship was employed in all strictly mosaic gla.s.s; but it is in the white windows (or the pale green windows, which were the nearest he could get to white, and which it is convenient to call white) that this drawing with the leads is most apparent--in patterns, that is to say, in which the design is formed entirely by the leadwork.

You have only to look at such patterns as Nos. 11 to 17, to see how this was so; they are all designed in outline, and the outline is given in lead. It is perfectly plain there how every separate line the glazier laid down in charcoal upon his bench stood for a strip of lead. And, looking at the gla.s.s, we see that it is the lead which makes the pattern. It is no straining of terms to call this designing in the lead. The ingenuity in designing such patterns as those below and opposite, which is very considerable, consists in so scheming them that every lead line shall fulfil alike a constructive and an artistic function; that is to say, that every line in the design shall be necessary to its artistic effect, that there shall be no lead line which is not an outline, no outline which is not a lead.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 11. PLAIN GLAZING, BONLIEU.]

It is not always that the glazier was so conscientious as this. M.

Viollet le Duc pointed out, in the most helpful article in his famous Dictionary of Architecture, under the head of _Vitrail_, how in the little window from Bonlieu, here ill.u.s.trated, the mediaeval craftsman resorted to a dodge, more ingenious than ingenuous, by which he managed to economise labour. Each separate lead line there does not enclose a separate piece of gla.s.s. The lines are all of lead; but some of them are mere dummies, strips of metal, holding nothing, carried across the face of the gla.s.s only, and soldered on to the more businesslike leads at each end. The extent of _bona fide_ glazing is indicated in the right-hand corner of the drawing. I confess I was inclined at first to think that Viollet le Duc might, in ascribing this gla.s.s to the twelfth century, very possibly have dated it too far back; for this is the kind of trick one would more naturally expect from the later and more sophisticated workman; but I have since come upon the same device myself, both at Reims and Chalons, in work certainly as old as the thirteenth century. You see, cutting the gla.s.s was the difficulty in those days, and sometimes it was shirked.

It should be noted that the subterfuge employed at Bonlieu and in the specimens from Chalons, opposite, was not in order to evade any difficulty in glazing--the designs present none--but merely to save trouble. There would have been more occasion for evasion in executing the design from Aix-la-Chapelle (14), where the sharp points of the fleur-de-lys give background shapes difficult for the glazier to cut. It will be noticed that to the left of the panel one of the points joins the necking-piece, which holds the fleur-de-lys together. That is a much more practical piece of glazing than the free point, which presents a difficulty in cutting the background, indicative of the late period to which the gla.s.s belongs. The earlier mediaeval glazier worked with primitive tools, which kept him perforce within the bounds of simplicity and dignified restraint.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 12. CHaLONS.]

In white windows, so called, he did not by any means confine himself wholly to the use of what it is convenient to call "white gla.s.s." From a very early date, perhaps from the very first, he would enrich it with some slight amount of colour. Having devised, as it were, a lattice of white lines, as in the left-hand pattern from Salisbury (overleaf), it was a very simple thing to fill here and there a division of his design with a piece of coloured instead of white gla.s.s, as in the pattern next to it in order. The third pattern, to the right, shows how he would even introduce a separate jewel of colour, perhaps painted, which had to be connected with the design by leads forming no part of the pattern.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 13. CHaLONS.]

Colour spots are more ingeniously introduced in the example from Brabourne Church, Kent, (said to be Norman) where the darker tints are ingeniously thrown into the background. But here again, although this is perhaps as early a specimen of glazing as we have in this country, the glazier resorts in his central rosettes to the aid of paint.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 14. AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 15. SOUTH TRANSEPT, SALISBURY.]

It will be observed that in the marginal lines which frame this window, and again in the white bands in two out of the three patterns from Salisbury, leads are introduced which have only a constructional use, and rather confuse the design. That they do not absolutely destroy it is due to its marked simplicity, and to the proportion of the narrow bands to the broad s.p.a.ces. This is yet more clearly marked in the very satisfactory glazing designs from S. Serge at Angers. The fact is, there is a limit to the possibilities of design, such as that from Sens (page 96), in which literally only four leads (viz., those from the points of the central diamond shape) are introduced wholly and solely for strength; and when it comes to windows of any considerable size, such as clerestory windows, to which plain glazing is peculiarly suited, leads which merely strengthen become absolutely necessary. The art of the designer consists in so scheming them that they shall not seriously interfere with the pattern.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 16. BRABOURNE CHURCH KENT.]

Were the pattern in lines of colour upon white, the crosslines strengthening them would of course be lost in the darker tint; but, as it happens, we do not find in the earliest glazing lines of interlacing colour, though they occur by way of border lines, as at S. Serge (below), where a marginal line of yellow is enclosed between strips of white.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 17. S. SERGE, ANGERS.]

The interlacing character of several of the white glazing patterns ill.u.s.trated betrays of course Romanesque influence; but there would not have been so many designs consisting of interlacing bands of white upon a white ground, enclosing, at intervals more or less rare, what had best be called jewels of colour, had it not been that the forms of interlacing strapwork lend themselves kindly to glazing.

Every time a strap disappears, as it were, behind another, you have just the break in its continuity which the glazier desires, and if only the interlacings are frequent enough (as on page 96) they give him all he wants.

So far the examples ill.u.s.trated are, for the most part, in outline; that is to say, on a ground of white the pattern appears as a network of leads, flowing or geometric as the case may be, emphasised here and there by a touch of dark colour, focussing them as it were. Without such points of colour a design looks sometimes too much like a mere outline, meant to be filled in with colour, and, in short, unfinished; but as yet the darker and lighter tints of white are not used to emphasise the pattern, as they would have done if, for example, the interlacing straps had been glazed in a slightly purer white than the ground. On the contrary, notwithstanding the very great variety in the tints of greenish-white, which resulted from the chemically imperfect manufacture of the gla.s.s, they were employed very much at haphazard, and so far from ever defining the design, go to obviate anything harsh or mechanical there may be in it. There is else, of course, a tendency in geometric pattern to look too merely geometric. One wants always to feel it is a window that is there, and not just so many feet of diaper.

Another practical form of design is that in which it is not the network of leads, but the s.p.a.ces they inclose, which const.i.tutes the pattern; where lines are not so much thought of as ma.s.ses; where the main consideration is colour, and contour is of quite secondary account. The leads fulfil still their artistic function of marking the division of the colours, as they fulfil the practical one of binding the bits of coloured gla.s.s together; the glazier still draws in lead lines; but attention is not called to them especially; indeed, with identically the same lead lines one could produce two or three quite different effects, according as one emphasised by stronger colour one series of shapes or another. In the case of a framework of strictly geometric lines, straight or curved, one gets patterns such as we see in marble inlay.

The slab of marble mosaic and the stained gla.s.s border opposite are more than alike; the one is simply a carrying further of the other. The gla.s.s design might just as well have been executed in marble, or the marble design in gla.s.s. In the upper church at a.s.sisi are some borders of geometric inlay, one of which is given on page 96, identical in character with the minute geometric inlay (which, by the way, was also in gla.s.s, though opaque), with which the Cosmati illuminated, so to speak, their marble shrines and monuments. This species of pattern work, appropriate as it is to gla.s.s mosaic, transparent as well as opaque, does not seem to have been much used in gla.s.s, even in Italy; where it does occur it is in a.s.sociation, as at a.s.sisi and Orvieto, with painted work of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, though from its Byzantine character it might as well be centuries earlier. It appears that this, which was, theoretically, the simplest and most obvious form of leaded pattern work, and might, therefore, well have been the earliest, was never adopted to anything like the extent to which interlacing ornament was carried.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 18. MARBLE MOSAIC, ROMAN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 19. GLa.s.s, ORVIETO.]

Mediaeval glaziers did not attempt anything like foliated ornament in leaded gla.s.s, and for good reason. In such work the difficulty of doing without lines detrimental to the design is greatly increased, whereas abstract forms you can bend to your will, as you can bend your strip of lead. The more natural the forms employed the more nature has to be considered in rendering them, and nature declines to go always in the direction of simple glazing. It might seem easy enough (to those who do not know the difficulty) to glaze together bits of heart-shaped green gla.s.s for leaves, and red for petals, with a dot of yellow for the eye of the flower, and to make use of the lead not only for outlines but for the stalks of the leaves and so on, all on a paler ground; but it is not so easy as that. The designer cannot go far without wanting other connecting leads (besides those used for the stalk); and when some leads are meant very emphatically to be seen and some to be ignored, there is no knowing what the actual effect may be: the drawing lines may be quite lost in a network of connecting leads. Again, the mediaeval glazier did not, so far as we have any knowledge, build up in lead glazing a boldly p.r.o.nounced pattern, light on dark or dark on light. This he might easily have done. On a small scale plain glazing must perforce be modest; but, given a scale large enough, almost any design in silhouette can be expressed in plain glazing. You may want in that case plenty of purely constructional leads, not meant to be seen, or in any case meant to be ignored; but if the contrast between design and background be only strong enough (say colour on white or white on colour), they do not in the least hurt the general effect. On the contrary, they are of the utmost use to the workman who knows his materials, enabling him to get that infinite variety of colour which is the crowning charm of gla.s.s.

What the designer of leaded gla.s.s had to consider was, in the first place, the difficulty of shaping the pieces. That is now no longer very great, thanks to the diamond, which makes cutting so easy that there is even a danger lest the workman's skill of hand may outrun his judgment, and tempt him to indulge in useless _tours de force_. The absurdity of taking the greatest possible pains to the least possible purpose is obvious. The more important consideration is now, therefore, the substantiality of the window once made. Think of the force of a gale of wind and its pressure upon the window: it is tremendous; and glazing does not long keep a smooth face before it. Except there is a solid iron bar to keep it in place, it soon bulges inwards, and presents a surface as undulous, on a smaller scale, as the pavement of St. Mark's; and, as it begins to yield, snap go the awkwardly shaped pieces of gla.s.s which the glazier has been at such pains to cut. The mediaeval artist, therefore, exercised no more than common sense, when he shaped the pieces of gla.s.s he employed with a view to security, avoiding sharp turns or elbows in the gla.s.s, or very long and narrow strips, or even very acutely pointed wedge-shaped pieces. No doubt the difficulty of cutting helped to keep him in the way he should go; probably, also, he was under no temptation to indulge in pieces of gla.s.s so large that, incapable of yielding, they were bound to break under pressure of the wind. That he sometimes used pieces so small as in time to get clogged with dust and dirt, was owing to the natural desire to use up the precious fragments which, under his clumsy system of cutting, must have acc.u.mulated in great quant.i.ty. Where most he showed his mastery was, in foreseeing where the strain would come, and introducing always a lead joint where the crack might occur, antic.i.p.ating and warding off the danger to come. He was workman enough frankly to accept the limitations of his trade. Occasionally (as at Bonlieu) he may have shirked work; but he accommodated himself to the nature of his materials. Never pretending to do what he could not, he betrayed neither its weakness nor his own.

Mere _glazing_ has here been discussed at a length which perhaps neither existing work of the kind nor the modern practice of the craft (more is the pity) might seem to demand. It is the most modest, the rudest even, of stained gla.s.s; but it is the beginning and the foundation of gla.s.s window making, and it affects most deeply even the fully developed art of the sixteenth century.

The leading of a window is the framework of its design, the skeleton to be filled out presently and clothed in colour; and, if the anatomy is wrong, nothing will ever make the picture right. The leads are the bones, which it is necessary to study, even though they were intrinsically without interest, for on them depends the form which shall eventually charm us. Beauty is not skin deep: it is the philosophy of the poet which is shallow.

CHAPTER IV.

EARLY MOSAIC WINDOWS.

It has been explained already at how very early a period "stained" gla.s.s begins also to be "painted" gla.s.s more or less.

But for the fond desire to be something more than an artist--to teach, to preach, to tell a story--the glazier would possibly have been quite content with the mere jewellery of gla.s.s, and might have gone on for years, and for generations, using his pot-metal as it left the pot. As it was, working always in the service of the Church, in whose eyes it was of much more importance that a window should be "storied" than that it should be "richly dight," he found it necessary from the first to adopt the use of paint--not, as already explained, for the purpose of giving colour, but of shutting it out, or at most modifying it. His work was still essentially, and in the first place, mosaic. He conceived his window, that is to say, as made up of a multiplicity of little pieces of coloured gla.s.s, the outlines supplied, for the most part, by the strong lines of connecting leadwork, and the details traced in lines of opaque pigment. He still designed with the leads, as I have expressed it, and throughout the thirteenth century (though less emphatically than in the twelfth) his design is commonly quite legible at a distance at which the painted detail is altogether lost; but in designing his leads he had always in view, of course, that they were to be helped out by paint.

In the late thirteenth century or early fourteenth century figure from Troyes, on page 336, which depends very little indeed upon any painted detail to be deciphered, the lighter figure glazed upon a ground of dark trellis-work is not only readable, but suggestive of considerable feeling; and in the undoubtedly fourteenth century figure on page 241, where, with the exception of the hands and face, there is absolutely no indication of the paint with which the artist eventually completed his drawing, there is no mistaking the rec.u.mbent figure of Jesse, even without any help of colour. But the earlier the gla.s.s, the less was there of painting, and the more the burden of design fell upon the glazier. The two figures from Le Mans, here given (generally allowed to belong to about the year 1100) show very plainly both the amount and the character of the painting used, and the extent to which the design depends upon it. There is no mistake about the value of the lead lines there, or the extreme simplicity of the painted detail.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 20. FIGURES FROM ASCENSION, LE MANS.]

It will be seen that paint is there used for three purposes: to paint out the ground round about the feet, hands, and faces; to mark the folds of the drapery, and just an indication of shading upon it; and to blacken the hair. It was only in thus rendering the human hair that the earliest craftsman ever used paint as local colour. In that case he had a way of sc.r.a.ping out of it lines of light to indicate detail. If such lines showed too bright, it was easy to tone them down with a film of thinner paint. In these particular figures from Le Mans the artist had not yet arrived at that process; but from the very first it was a quite common custom, instead of painting very small ornamental detail, to obscure the gla.s.s with solid pigment, and then sc.r.a.pe out the ornament.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 21. HITCHIN CHURCH.]

The fact is, that in early windows a much larger proportion of the gla.s.s is obscured, and had need to be obscured, than would be supposed. It will be seen what a considerable area of paint surrounds the feet of the two apostles on page 33. This is partly owing to the then difficulty of exactly shaping the pieces of gla.s.s employed; but it is largely due to the actual necessity of sufficient area of dark to counteract the tendency of the lighter shades of gla.s.s, such as the brownish-pink employed for flesh tints, to spread their rays and obliterate the drawing. Not only would the extremely attenuated fingers, shown in the sc.r.a.ps from Hitchin Church above look quite well fleshed in the gla.s.s, but it was essential that they should be so painted in order to come out satisfactorily--that is, without the aid of shading, to which painters did not yet much resort. On the contrary, they were at first very chary of half tint--employing it, indeed, for the rounding of flesh and so on, but not to degrade the colour of the gla.s.s, small though their palette was.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 22. S. REMI, REIMS.]