Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 23

_Canopies._--Canopies occur now over subjects as well as single figures.

The canopy is designed in flat elevation. Any indication of perspective betokens the end of the period. It has broadish shafts, usually for the most part white, which terminate in pinnacles (page 155). It has seldom any architectural base: the figures stand upon gra.s.s or pavement. It has usually a three-cusped arch, and above that a pointed gable decorated with crockets and ending in a finial. Crockets and finial are usually in strong, bra.s.sy yellow. Above are pinnacles and shrinework in white and colour, including as a rule a fair amount of yellow.

It may rise to a great height, dwarfing the figure beneath it. This occurs very especially in German work.

Sometimes the most conspicuous thing in the window is this disproportionate canopy. Its very disproportion is characteristic of the period.

In German work one great bra.s.sy canopy will frequently be found stretching right across the several lights of the window, over-arching a single subject. This triptich-like composition will occupy, perhaps, two-thirds of the height of the window. The background behind the pinnacles of this canopy may be either of one colour or of geometric diaper in mosaic (elsewhere characteristic of the Early period), finished off by a more or less arbitrary line--a cusped arch, for instance--above which is white gla.s.s. This kind of canopy has, by way of exception, an architectural base.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 227. CHaLONS.]

Another German practice is to fill the window with huge circular subject medallions, occupying the entire width of the window, and intersected by the mullions.

Single-light windows have sometimes a central elongated medallion or panel subject (without canopy), above and below which is ornamental grisaille.

_Borders._--All windows have, as a rule, borders; but they are narrower than in Early work.

Tracery lights, which now form a conspicuous part of the window, are, as a rule, also each separately bordered, often with a still narrower border in colour, or it may be only a line of colour.

Grisaille windows have usually coloured borders, foliaged or heraldic (as above). The border does not necessarily frame the light at its base; very often there is an inscription there. Between the coloured border and the stonework is still invariably a marginal line of white gla.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 228. EARLY DECORATED FIGURE, TROYES.]

Sometimes, more especially in tracery, this white line is broad enough to have a pattern painted upon it, in which case there is no coloured border. Or this white border line may be enriched at intervals by rosettes or blocks of colour upon it. Or, again, it may be in part tinted with pale yellow stain.

Some such border is usually carried round each separate tracery light, with the result that Decorated tracery may usually be distinguished at a glance from later work by a certain lack of breadth about it.

There is no need to say more about Decorated tracery, seeing that the idea of this epitome is to enable the amateur to form some opinion as to the period of a window, and not to prompt the designer. The geometric character of the stonework proclaims the period, and, unless there is something in the design of the gla.s.s to indicate a later date, it may be taken to belong to it. It cannot well be earlier if it fits.

_Stain._--Yellow stain is proof positive that the gla.s.s is not much earlier than the fourteenth century, for it is only about that time that the process of staining white gla.s.s yellow was discovered. The occurrence therefore of white and colour upon the same piece of gla.s.s--_i.e._, not glazed up with it, but stained upon it, is indicative of Middle or Late Gothic.

Stained yellow is always purer and clearer than pot-metal; when pale it inclines to lemon, when dark to orange. It is best described as golden.

In comparison with it pot-metal yellow is brownish or bra.s.sy.

This yellow stain warms and brightens Decorated windows, especially those in grisaille. It naturally does away with a certain amount of glazing, for colour is now not entirely mosaic. Bands of yellow ornament in white windows, if stained, have lead on one side of them at most.

The hair of angels comes to be stained yellow upon white gla.s.s, which towards the fifteenth century takes the place of the flesh tint.

_Figures._--Figures are still rather rudely drawn. They do not always fill out their niches, which, indeed, frequently overpower them. In att.i.tude they pose and would be graceful. There is some swing about their posture, but it is often exaggerated. Drapery becomes more voluminous, fuller and freer, as shown opposite.

At the back of the figure hangs commonly a screen diapered damask-fashion--the diaper often picked out of solid paint.

_Grisaille._--The distinguishing characteristics of Decorated grisaille are fully described in the chapter dealing with it. It has usually a coloured border. The foliated pattern no longer follows the lines of the white or coloured strapwork, but it does not interlace with the straps (pages 163, 333).

Coloured bosses adorn the centre of the grisaille panels. Frequently these take the form of heraldic shields, planted, as it were, upon the grisaille.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 229. S. OUEN, ROUEN.]

The practice of cross-hatching the background to grisaille foliage dies out in France and England. In Germany it survives throughout the period; or, it may be, the background is coated with solid paint, and the cross-hatching is in white lines scratched out of that.

_Naturalism._--The foliation of the ornament is now everywhere naturalistic. That is the surest sign of the period, at first the only sign of change. In grisaille patterns and in coloured borders you can identify the rose, the vine, the oak, the ivy, the maple, and so on (pages 162, 166, 168).

In Germany, the design of ornamental windows consists often of naturalistic foliage in white and colour upon a coloured ground, the whole rich, but not so rich as Early gla.s.s (pages 171 _et seq._). There also occur windows stronger in colour than ordinary grisaille, designed on lines more geometric than those of French or English gla.s.s of the period (page 170).

[Ill.u.s.tration: 230. 14TH CENTURY GERMAN.]

_Colour._--Gla.s.s gets less streaky, evener, and sometimes lighter in tint, as time goes on. Flesh tint gets paler and pinker, and at last white; "white" gla.s.s gets more nearly white.

Much blue and ruby continue to be used; but more green is introduced, and more yellow, often the two in combination. In fact, there is a leaning towards combinations of green and yellow, rather than the red and blue so characteristic of Early gla.s.s. Green is frequently used for backgrounds. The pure bright emerald-like green gives way to greens inclining more to olive. In some German windows, green, yellow, and purple-brown predominate. Occasionally, in the latter part of the century, pale blue is modified by yellow stain upon it, which gives a greenish tint.

_Painting._--Outline is still used; but it becomes more delicate.

Shading is still smeared on with a brush. But in the latter half of the century it was the practice to stipple it, so as to soften the edges and give it a granular texture. This is not quite the same thing as the "stipple or matt shading" described on page 64, where the gla.s.s was entirely coated with a stippled tint and the lights brushed out.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 231. WELLS.]

Decorated gla.s.s is plentiful in England and Germany, not so abundant in France.

FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

_Perpendicular Gla.s.s._--By the fifteenth century the gla.s.s painter had quite made up his mind in favour of more light. He makes use of gla.s.s in larger sheets, and of lighter and brighter colour. His white is especially purer than before, and he uses it in much greater quant.i.ties.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 232. FIGURES, S. MARY'S, ROSS.]

So decidedly is this so, that a typical fifteenth century window strikes you as a screen of silvery-white gla.s.s in which are set pictures or patches of more or less brilliant, rather than intensely deep, colour.

_Design._--Design takes, for the most part, the form of figure and canopy windows, schemed somewhat on the same lines as in the Decorated period--the subjects, that is to say, cross the window in horizontal bands.

But there is so much white gla.s.s in the canopy work--it is practically all in white (as stone) touched with stain (as gilding)--and it so entirely surrounds the figure subjects, that you do not so much notice the horizontal bands (into which the subjects really fall when you begin to dissect the design) as the ma.s.s of white in which they are embedded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 233. PERPENDICULAR CANOPY.]

_Canopies._--The larger Perpendicular windows are now crossed by stone transoms, so that very long lights do not, as a rule, occur.

Each light has a canopy, without any enclosing border (233). The canopy stands, as it were, in the window opening, almost filling it, except that, above, behind the topmost pinnacles, are glimpses of red or blue background, not separated from the stonework by so much as a line of white, heretofore of almost invariable occurrence. The hood and base of canopy are shown in misunderstood perspective, indicating usually a three-sided projection (page 342).

Its shafts and base rest upon the ground, on which are painted gra.s.s and foliage, all in white and stain. When standing figures occupy the place of honour, the base may very likely include a small subject, ill.u.s.trative of a scene in the life of the personage depicted above. Or the base may be a sort of pedestal (page 179).

The figures usually stand upon a chequered mosaic pavement in black and white, or white and stain, not very convincingly foreshortened (page 185).

In the canopy may be little windows of pot-metal colour, and in the base perhaps a spot or two of colour; but, whatever the amount of pot-metal (never much) or of stain (often a good deal), the effect is always silvery-white; and as time goes on the canopy becomes more solidly and ma.s.sively white. The groining at the back of the niche just above the figures is a feature of the full-blown style. The vault is usually stained, less often glazed in pot-metal. There is more scope for this coloured groining in windows where the canopy runs through several lights. That is more common in France and Germany than with us. In English work each light has, as a rule, its own canopy.

In France, and more especially in Germany, the canopies are not seldom in yellow instead of white, golden in effect instead of silvery.

Sometimes white and yellow canopies alternate (Nuremberg, Munich). The German canopy is often more florid, and less distinctly architectural than the English.

Perpendicular canopies are more in proportion to the figures under them than Decorated. Usually they are important enough to be a feature in the window, if not the feature. Sometimes, however, they are quite small and insignificant (East window, York), in which event the subjects appear more like a series of small panels, one above the other. In that case there is likely to be a large amount of white gla.s.s in the subjects themselves (pages 252, 339). Possibly the background is white. In any case, there is usually a fair share of white gla.s.s in the drapery of figures. The faces also are almost invariably white, often with stained hair; and this white flesh is characteristic of the period.

Until the turn of the century, landscape or architectural accessories are, to a large extent, in white and stain, against a blue or ruby ground.