Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 22

Medallions are framed by lines of colour and beaded bands of white, but they do not, as a rule, separate themselves very markedly from their ornamental surroundings. The effect is one rather indeterminate glory of intense colour.

Except in quite the earliest medallion windows, the strong iron bars supporting the gla.s.s are, as a rule, bent (above), to follow the outline of the medallions. That was done in no other period.

2. _Rose Windows_ occur mainly in French churches. They are a variation upon the medallion window. A great Rose window (Chartres, Bourges, etc.) may be regarded as a series of radiating medallion lights, with subjects relatively fewer in number, and a greater proportion of pattern work.

Occasionally they consist of pattern work altogether. Smaller Roses (the only form of tracery met with in quite Early work) contain very often a central circular medallion subject, the cusps or foils round it being occupied with ornament, all in rich colour, even though the lights below it be in grisaille.

3. _Figure and Canopy Windows_ (page 40) are more proper to the clerestory and triforium of a church, but they are not entirely confined to a far-off position.

With regard to them it should be mentioned that figures under canopies, sitting, or more often standing--one above the other in long, narrow lights--occur throughout the Gothic periods, and even in Renaissance gla.s.s. The characteristic thing about the Early ones is the stiffness and comparative grotesqueness of the figures and the modesty of the canopy. This last is of small dimensions. It may be merely a trefoiled arch (page 40). Usually it is more architectural (page 46), gabled, with a little roofing, and perhaps a small tower or two rising above, not beautiful. It is in fairly strong colours. It is so little conspicuous that it is not at first sight always distinguishable from the background to the figure. Occasionally the figure has no canopy at all. The saint stands front face, straight up in his niche, in a constrained and cramped position, occupying its full width, which is obviously insufficient. His feet rest in an impossible manner upon a label bearing his name; or, if that be inscribed upon a label in his hand, or on the background behind him, then he stands upon a little mound of green to represent the earth (page 40).

Figure and canopy alike are archaic in design, and rudely drawn. It is seldom that a figure subject on a smaller scale is introduced below the standing figure, as was frequently the case in later work. Groups of figures are characteristically confined to medallion windows.

_The Border_ is a feature in Early gla.s.s. It is broad. In medallion windows it measures sometimes as much as one-fourth the width of the light. It takes up, that is to say, perhaps half the area of the window.

It consists of foliated ornament similar in character to that between the medallions. Very broad borders occasionally include smaller figure medallions. In figure and canopy windows the borders are less, and simpler. Sometimes they consist merely of broad bands of colour interrupted by rosettes of other colours. Circ.u.mstances of proportion, and so on, influence the width of the border; but a broad border is characteristic of the Early period.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 218. LE MANS.]

In Rose windows the border is of less account, and is confined, as a rule, to the outer ring of lights, or, it may be, to their outer edge.

_Detail._--Ornamental detail is severely conventional. In very Early work (page 327) it has rather the character of Romanesque ornament, with straplike stalks interlacing, often enriched by a beaded, zig-zag, or other pattern, which may be either painted upon it or picked out of solid brown.

Early in the thirteenth century foliage a.s.sumes the simpler Gothic form, with cinquefoiled, or more often trefoiled, leaf.a.ge (as here shown).

[Ill.u.s.tration: 219. CHARTRES.]

When it begins to be more naturalistic it is a sign of transition to the Decorated period. In Germany something of Romanesque flavour lingered far into the thirteenth century (page 330). There is properly no Early Gothic period there. Heraldry is modestly introduced into Early gla.s.s.

The Donor is occasionally represented on quite a small scale in the lower part of a window, his offering in his hand; or he is content to be represented by a small shield of arms.

_Colour._--The gla.s.s in Early windows is uneven in substance, and, consequently, in colour. This is very plainly seen in the "white" gla.s.s, which shades off, according to its thickness, from greenish or yellowish-white to bottle colour. The colour lies also sometimes in streaks of lighter and darker. This is especially so in red gla.s.s. The shades of colour most usually employed for backgrounds are blue and ruby. White occurs, but only occasionally.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 220. AUXERRE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 221. PATCHWORK OF GRISAILLE, SALISBURY.]

The Early palette consists of:--

White, greenish, and rather clouded; red, rubylike, often streaky; blue, deep sapphire to palest grey-blue, oftenest deep; turquoise-blue, of quite different quality, inclining to green; yellow, fairly strong, but never hot; green, pure and emerald-like, or deep and even low in tone, but only occasionally inclining to olive; purple-brown, reddish or brownish, not violet; flesh tint, actually lighter and more pinkish shades of this same purple-brown. In very early work the flesh is inclined to be browner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 222. S. KUNIBERT, COLOGNE.]

It must be remembered that, though the palette of the first glaziers was restricted, the proceeding of the gla.s.s-makers was so little scientific that they had no very great control over their manufacture. No two pots of gla.s.s, therefore, came out alike. Hence a great variety of shades of gla.s.s, though produced from a few simple recipes. They might by accident produce, once in a way, almost any colour. A pot of ruby sometimes turned out greenish-black. Still, the colours above mentioned predominate in Early work, and are clearly those aimed at.

_Workmanship._--The glazing of an Early window is strictly a mosaic of small pieces of gla.s.s. Each separate colour in it is represented by a separate piece of gla.s.s, or several pieces.

The great white eyes, for example, of big clerestory figures are separate pieces of white gla.s.s, rimmed with lead, and held in place by connecting strips of lead, which give them often very much the appearance of spectacles (page 40). In work on a sufficiently large scale the hair of the head and beard are also glazed in white, or perhaps in some dark colour, distinct from the brownish-pink flesh tint peculiar to the period (same page). No large pieces of gla.s.s occur.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 223. S. KUNIBERT, COLOGNE.]

Upon examination the window proves to be netted over with lines of lead jointing, much of which is lost in the outlines of the design.

In large clerestory figures and the like, ma.s.ses of one colour occur, but they are made up of innumerable little bits of gla.s.s, by no means all of one shade of colour; whence the richness in tone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 224. S. JEAN-AUX-BOIS.]

_Painting._--In Early gla.s.s painting plays a very subordinate part. Only one pigment is used, and that not by way of colour, but to paint out the light and define form.

Details of figure and ornament are traced in firm strong brush lines.

Lines mark the exaggerated expression of the face, the close folds of the spare drapery wrapped tightly round the figure, the serration of foliage, and so on (pages 33, 37, 324). Lines, in the form of sweeping brush strokes or cross-hatching, are used also to emphasise such shading (not very much) as may be indicated in thirteenth century work, or perhaps it should rather be said that the lines of shading are supplemented very often by a coat of thin brown paint, not always very easily detected on the deep-coloured gla.s.s of the period.

_White Windows, or "Grisaille."_--Grisaille a.s.sumes in France the character of interlacing strapwork all in white. Sometimes this is quite without paint (page 25). Plain work of the kind occurs also with us; but it is dangerous to give a date to simple glazing. That at Salisbury (page 26) is probably not of the very earliest.

In France, as with us, such strapwork is a.s.sociated with foliated detail, traced in strong outline upon the white gla.s.s and defined by a background of cross-hatched lines which go for a greyer tint (above).

After the beginning of the thirteenth century, this strapwork is sometimes in colour, or points of colour are introduced in the shape of rosettes, etc., and in the border (pages 137, 138).

In England there is from the first usually a certain amount of coloured gla.s.s in grisaille windows (pages 141, 332). Sometimes there is a considerable quant.i.ty of it (Five Sisters, York); but it never appears to be much. The effect is always characteristically grey and silvery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 225. GRISAILLE, SALISBURY.]

So long as the painted foliage keeps closely within the formal lines of strapwork, etc., it is, at all events in English gla.s.s, a sign of comparatively early thirteenth century work.

Later in the century the scroll winds rather more freely about the window (page 143).

The omission of the cross-hatched background and the more natural rendering of the foliation (page 386) announce the approach to the Decorated period.

Figure subjects in colour, planted, as it were, upon grisaille or quarry lights (Poitiers, Amiens), and grisaille borders to windows with figures in rich colour (Auxerre), are of exceptional occurrence.

Winston gives the year 1280 as the limit of the Early period, but there seems no absolute reason for drawing the line at that date. The use of stain, which was the beginning of a new departure in gla.s.s, does not p.r.o.nounce itself before the fourteenth century. It seems, therefore, more convenient to include the last twenty years of the century in the first period, and to call it thirteenth century, accepting the more naturalistic type of foliage, when it occurs, as sign of transition; for, apart from that, the later thirteenth century work is not very markedly different from what was done before 1280.

FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 226. S. URBAIN, TROYES.]

_Decorated or Intermediate Gothic._--Decorated gla.s.s grows characteristically livelier in colour than Early gla.s.s; at first it becomes warmer, owing to the use of more yellow, then lighter, owing to the use of white. It does not divide itself so obviously into coloured and grisaille.

The figure subjects include, as time goes on, more and more white gla.s.s.

The grisaille contains more colour.

Figures and figure subjects are now very commonly used in combination with grisaille ornament in the same window. That is a new and characteristic departure (page 159).

_Composition._--Figure windows occur, indeed, with little or no ornament, in which case the subjects are piled one above the other, in panels rather than medallions, or under canopies. When the canopies are insignificant the result is one apparently compact ma.s.s of small figure work, as deep and rich perhaps in colour (S. Sebald's, Nuremberg) as an Early medallion window; but the colour is not so equally distributed; it occurs more in patches.

Decorated canopies, however, are usually, after the first few years, of sufficient size to a.s.sert themselves as very conspicuous patches of rather bra.s.sy yellow, which in a window of several lights (and windows now almost invariably consist of two or more lights) form a band (or if there are two or more tiers of canopies, a series of bands) across the window.

In the case of grisaille windows also, figures or figure subjects are introduced either in the form of shaped panels or under little canopies, and take the form of a band or bands of comparatively rich colour across a comparatively light window.

When these canopies are themselves p.r.o.nounced, the window shows alternate bands of figures (rich), canopies (yellowish), and ornamental pattern (whitish). In any case these horizontal bands across the window mark departure from the earlier style.