Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 27

(as he most wilfully miscalled himself) of this perhaps "empty day." It was left to the modern artist to discover that.

The subject most frequently affected by the designer of the West window of a Gothic church was "The Last Judgment," in which appeared our Lord in Majesty, St. Michael weighing human souls, angels welcoming the righteous into heaven, and fiends carrying off the doomed to h.e.l.l. These "Doom" windows, as they are also called, are not, to the modern mind, impressive--not, that is to say, as the pictures of reward and punishment hereafter they were meant to be. The scene strikes us invariably as grotesque rather than terrible, actual as it may have been to the simple artist, who meant to be a sober chronicler, and to the yet simpler worshippers to whom he addressed himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 248. THE TEMPTATION, FAIRFORD.]

Apart from that, "Last Judgment" windows are among the most interesting in the church. The portion of the window, in particular, which is devoted to perdition is most attractive. h.e.l.l flames offered to the artist a splendid opportunity for colour, upon which he seized with delight. And the fiends he imagined! Doubtless those crude conceptions of his were very real to him, convincing and terror-striking. The grim humour which we see in them may be of our own imagining; but that the draughtsman enjoyed his creations no artist will doubt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 249. PART OF LAST JUDGMENT, FAIRFORD.]

That is easy to understand. His subject allowed him freedom of imagination, gave him scope for fancy, humour, colour; and all his faculties found outlet. No wonder his would-be fiends live beautiful in our recollection! In the midst of ruby flames dance devils, purple, black, and brown, gnashing carnivorous teeth or yellow fangs, their beady, white eyes gleaming with cruelty. Devils there are apparently red-hot; others green and grey, with a beautiful but unholy kind of iridescence about them. As for the blue devils, they are beautiful enough to scare away from the beholder blue devils less tangible, which may have had possession of him. There is a great white devil in a window at Stra.s.sburg, who has escaped, it seems, from the Doom window near by, but not from the flames about him, a background of magnificent ruby. The drawing of a part of the Last Judgment from Fairford (page 373) gives only the grotesqueness of the scene, the quaintly conceived tortures of the d.a.m.ned; but that division of the gla.s.s is in reality a glory of gorgeous colour, to which one is irresistibly attracted. For that, as ever, the designer has reserved his richest and most glowing colour.

Some slight touch of human perversity perhaps inspires him also. At Fairford, at all events, he has put some of his best work, and especially some of his finest colour, into the figures of the Persecutors of the Church. Unfortunately, they are high up in the clerestory, and so do not get their share of attention; certainly they do not get the praise they deserve. Why, one is inclined to ask, this honour to the enemies of the Church on the part of the churchman? Was he at heart a heathen giving secret vent in art to feelings he dared not openly express? Not a bit of it! He was just a trifle tired of Angels, and Saints, and subjects according to convention; he was delighted at the chance of doing something not quite tame and same, and revelled in the opportunity when it occurred. In the tracery openings above the persecutors, where in the ordinary way would be angels, are lodged much more appropriate little fiends. They haunt the memory long after you have seen them, not as anything very terrific, but as bits of beautiful colour. The Devil overleaf, hovering in wait for the soul of the impenitent thief upon the cross, is not by any means a favourable specimen of the Fairford fiends.

Occasionally there is a grimness about the mediaeval Devil which we feel to this day. In a window at S. Etienne, Beauvais, there is a quite unforgettable picture of a woman struggling in the clutches of the evil one. She is draped in green, the Devil is of greenish-white, the architecture is represented in a gloom of purple and dark blue; only a peep of pale sky is seen through the window. On the one hand, this is a delightful composition of decorative colour. On the other it is intensely dramatic. It sets one wondering who this may be, and what will be the outcome of it. The struggle is fearful, the fiend is quite frantic in action. One is so taken with the scene that one does not notice that his head is wanting, and has been replaced by one which does not even fit his shoulders. That the effect, for all that, is impressive, speaks volumes for the story-teller.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 250. FAIRFORD.]

Alas, alas, the Devil is dead! His modern counterfeit is a fraud. You may see this at the church of S. Vincent, at Rouen, in one of the subjects representing the life of that saint, where he puts the devils to flight. The nearest of them is an evil-looking thing, ruby coloured, uncannily spotted, like some bright poisonous-looking fungus. The restorer has supplemented these retreating devils by a farther one painted on the grey-blue sky. The imp is grotesque enough, and very cleverly put in, but it plainly belongs no longer to the early sixteenth century. It suggests a theatrical "property," not the hobgoblin of old belief. That is just what the devilry in old gla.s.s never does.

It must be owned that mediaeval Angels charm us less. They are by comparison tame. Their colour is delicate and silvery, belike, but not seductive; their wings sit awkwardly upon them; they fulfil more or less trivial functions, bearing scrolls or emblems, shields of arms even.

They are not in the least ethereal. They are too much on the model of man or woman. What possible business, for example, have they with legs and feet? Yet it is by the rarest chance that the body is, as it were, lost in a swirl of drapery, which, by disguising the lower limbs, makes the image by so much, if not the more angelic, at least the less obviously of the earth.

The gla.s.s hunter cannot but be amused every now and again by odd anachronisms in mediaeval and even later ill.u.s.trations in gla.s.s. But wonder at them ceases when we remember how simple-minded was the craftsman of those days before archaeology. If he wished to picture scenes of the long past--and he did--there was nothing for it but to show them as they occurred to his imagination--as happening, that is to say, in his own day; and that is practically what he did. He had perhaps a vague notion that a Roman soldier should wear a kilt; but in the main he was content that the onlookers at the Crucifixion should be costumed according to the period of William the Conqueror, or Maximilian, in which he himself happened to live. The practice had, at least, one advantage over our modern displays of probably very inaccurate learnedness, in that it brought the scene close home to the unlearned observer, and, as it were, linked the event with his own life. In short, there is more vitality in that rude story-telling than in the more elaborate histories, much less inaccurate in detail doubtless, to which to-day and henceforth artists are pledged.

There is no occasion to dwell upon the oddities of gla.s.s painting; they are those of mediaeval art all through. If we take a certain incongruity for granted, the guilelessness of it only charms us. That same guilelessness enables the artist to make absolutely ornamental use of themes which to-day we might think it profane to make subservient to decorative effect. We never question his sincerity, though in the scene of the Creation, as at Erfurth, he made a pattern of the birds, pair and pair, each on its own tree. He can safely show the staff of S.

Christopher, as at Freiburg, blossoming so freely as conveniently to fill the head of the window and balance the Child upon his shoulder.

According as it occurs to him, or as it suits his purpose, kings and bishops take part in the Crucifixion; S. Michael tramples upon a dragon big enough to swallow him at a mouthful; Abraham goes out, gorgeously arrayed in red and purple, to slaughter Isaac on a richly decorated altar, and a white ram, prancing among the green, calls his attention to itself as the more appropriate sacrifice; Adam and Eve are driven forth from Eden by a scarlet angel, draped in white, with wings as well as sword of flaming red. In this last case the peculiar colour has a significance. Elsewhere it implies the poverty of the glazier's palette, or indicates the sacrifice of natural to artistic effect. So it was that, till quite the end of the thirteenth century, we meet with positively blue beards, ruby cows, and trees of all the colours of the rainbow; and even at a much later date than that, primary-coloured cattle look over the manger at the Nativity, and Christ is shown entering Jerusalem on a bright blue donkey.

To the last the gla.s.s painter indulged in very interesting compound subjects--the Nativity, for example, with in the distance the Magi on their way; the Last Supper, and in the foreground, relieved against the tablecloth, Christ washing Peter's feet, the apostles grouped round so as to form part of each or either subject. Sometimes a series of events form a single picture, as where you have the Temptation, the Expulsion, Eve with her distaff, Adam with his spade, the childhood of Cain and Abel, and the first fratricide, all grouped in one comprehensive landscape.

Consecutive pictures, by the way, generally follow in horizontal not vertical series, beginning on your left as you face the window. There is no invariable rule; but in most cases the order of the subjects is from left to right, row after row, terminating at the top of the window.

From the beginning difficult doctrinal subjects are attempted, as well as histories and legends. In the sixteenth century the design is often an allegory, full of meaning, though the meaning of it all may not be very obvious. The Virtues, for example, no longer content to stand under canopies, systematically spearing each its contrasting Vice, harness themselves, as at S. Patrice, Rouen, to a processional car, in which are the Virgin, Christ upon the Cross, and sundry vases, preceded by the Patriarchs and other holy personages. Another interesting "morality," at S. Vincent, Rouen, is pictured in a medley of little figures each with descriptive label--"Richesse," for example, a lady in gorgeous golden array; "Pitie," a matron of sober aspect; "Les Riches Ingra.s.s," a group of gay young men; "Le Riche" and "Le Poure," alike pursued by death.

Another decorative device of the sixteenth century is the Virgin, lifesize, surrounded by her emblems and little white scrolls describing them--"Fons ortorum," "Sivit as Dei," and so on, in oddly spelt Latin.

This occurs at Conches.

In Later Gothic, and of course in Renaissance gla.s.s, the situation is, if not realised, at all events dramatically treated. One scarcely knows to which period to attribute the window at S. Patrice, Rouen, with scenes from the life of S. Louis, an admirably sober and serious piece of work. Conspicuous in it is the recurring mantle of the King, deep indigo coloured, embroidered with golden _fleurs-de-lys_, on an inky-blue ground. The whole effect is rich but strikingly low in tone.

An exceptionally fine scene is that in which the King, in a golden boat with white sails, ermine diapered, a crown upon his head, kneels in prayer before a little crucifix, whilst his one companion lifts up his hands in terror: the man is clad in green; for the rest the colour is sombre, only the pale blue armour of the Saint, his dark blue cloak, for once undiapered--as if the artist felt that here the golden lilies would be out of place--and the leaden sea around: that extends to the very top of the picture, distant ships painted upon it to indicate that it is water. An inscription explains how:--

"En revenant du pays de Syrie En mer fut tourmente ... gde furie Mais en priant Jesu Christ il en fut delivre."

It must be allowed that the storm does not rage very terrifically; but the effect is not merely beautiful as colour but really descriptive, and something more.

It is only occasionally that this much of dramatic effect is produced; but touches of well-studied realism are common, as where, in the same church, at the martyrdom of a saint, the executioners who feed the fire shrink from the yellow flames and guard their eyes.

Decorative treatment goes almost without saying in the early sixteenth century. At S. Patrice, again, is a singularly fine instance of that. In the centre of the window, against a background of forest, with the distant hunt in full cry, S. Eustache stands entranced, his richly clad figure a focus of bright colour; facing him, in the one light, the legendary stag, enclosing between its antlers the vision of the crucifix, balanced, in the other, by the white horse of the convert: the note of white is repeated in the lithe hounds running through the three lights, and, with the silvery trunks of the trees, holds the composition together. This subject of the Conversion of S. Hubert was rather a favourite one in gla.s.s, and was usually well treated. The stag is invaluable. At Erfurth he stands against the green, a ma.s.s of yellow, with purple antlers, which form a vesica-shaped frame for the fabled vision.

The use of white, by the way, as a means of holding the window together is remarkable throughout Later gla.s.s, even apart from white canopy work.

In the cathedral at Perugia there is a window in which a stream of white pavement flows, as it were, down through the groups of richly coloured figures, emphasising them, and at the same time connecting them with the canopy.

There is no end to the interest of subject in gla.s.s; but the subject would lead us too far astray from the purpose of this book. Enough has been said to indicate the kind of interest which each of us best finds for himself in gla.s.s hunting.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

HOW TO SEE WINDOWS.

The just appreciation of stained gla.s.s is more than difficult, and judgment with regard to it more than ordinarily fallible. It is too much to expect of a window that it should stand the test of a light for which it was not designed. The most conscientious artist can do no more than design it for the light by which he imagines it is most likely to be seen. There must inevitably be times of day, when the sun is in a position not favourable to it, and many days when the intensity of the light, even though it come from the right quarter, is not what he relied upon. It happens, of course, that gla.s.s is often seen under such conditions that the brilliancy of the windows on one side of the church is literally put out by a flood of light poured in upon them through the windows (brilliantly illuminated by it) on the opposite side. The best of critics could not appreciate the best of gla.s.s under circ.u.mstances like that.

Suppose the windows north and south of a church to be of equal merit, one's appreciation of them, at first sight, would depend upon the time of day; and the light which did most justice to the northern windows would do least to the southern, and _vice versa_. Experience teaches a man to make allowances, but he can only judge what he has seen; and it is only with the light shining through a window that he can see its colour or judge of its effect.

The wonderful difference which the strength of the light makes in the appearance of a window, is nowhere quite so obvious as in the case of windows, not of gla.s.s, but of translucent alabaster--as, for example, at Orvieto, in the lower lights on either side of the nave, or, framed in black marble mullions, at the West end of the cathedral. The more or less square-shaped slabs of which they are formed are, in very many cases, made up of a number of pieces cemented together in lines which take very much the place of lead lines, and suggest, with the bars holding them in place, the practice of the glazier; but the effect is much less that of gla.s.s than of deepest amber in the unbroken panels, of gorgeous tortoise-sh.e.l.l in those that are patched and pieced together.

These last are, if not the more beautiful, certainly the more interesting. The brown and gold and h.o.r.n.y-white grow murkier when the light does not shine full upon the windows; but there is a mystery about the colour still, which makes up for the loss of brilliancy. If your mood is that way, you may find in the curious marbling of the stone strange pictures of cloudland and fantastic landscape. It is partly the shape, no doubt, of a circular slab high above the western door, which calls to mind the image of the moon with its mysterious mountains.

A more delicate, if not always so rich an effect, is to be seen in the great monolithic slabs which fill the five square-headed windows in the apse of the upper church at S. Miniato. Effect, did I say? Nay, rather effects, for they change with every gradation in the light. You may see at first little more than flat surfaces of pleasantly mottled white and purple-grey, translucent, but comparatively dull and dead. Then, as the sun creeps round the corner, a strange life comes into them. The white and palest greys begin to glow, and turn by slow degrees to pearly-pink, which kindles into gold, and deepens in the duskier parts to copper-red.

The stronger markings of the stone now show out in unsuspected strength, and the lighter veins take on by contrast a greenish tint, so that the warm colour is subtly shot with its cool counterpart. If, when you first see the windows, the sun illumines them, the effect is less magical; you get your strongest impression first; but in the course of an hour or so a great change may take place--when, for example, towards noon the light pa.s.ses away; but for a long while the stone remains luminous. Your eyes are open now, and in the delicate ashen-grey you see--or is it that you feel it to be there?--a tint of rose.

In proportion as it is less opaque than alabaster, gla.s.s is less perceptibly affected by changes of light; but, whether we perceive it or not, it owes all its effect to the light shining through it. The most fair-minded of us misjudge windows because we cannot see them often enough to be quite sure we have seen them at their best--that is to say, on the right day, and at the right time of day.

In comparing one window with another we are more than ever likely to do injustice. Even if they happen to be both in the same church, the light most favourable to the one may, as just said, be quite the least favourable to the other. Each must in fairness be judged at its best; and it is no easy matter to compare to-day's impression with yesterday's, or it may be last week's--more especially when a newer impression of the same thing, staring you in the face, will stamp itself upon the vision. When years, instead of days, intervene, the justice of even the most retentive memory is open to gravest doubt.

Go to the church of S. Alpin, at Chalons, and in the morning you will find the East windows brilliantly rich: in the early afternoon, even of a bright day, they will be lacking in transparency, dull, ineffective.

So at S. Sebald's, Nuremberg, the splendid fourteenth century gla.s.s on the north side of the choir proves absolutely obscure in the late afternoon. Grisaille, which was delicate under a moderately subdued light, will appear thin and flimsy with a strong sun behind it. It has happened to me to describe the same gla.s.s on one occasion as too heavily, on another as too thinly painted; and, again, to describe a window as warm in tone which memory (and my notes) had painted cool. On another occasion, well-remembered windows were not to be identified again. It seemed that in the course of a few intervening years they must have been restored out of all knowledge; a few hours later in the day there was no mistaking them, though they had, indeed, lost something by restoration.

When the most careful and deliberate notes tell such different, and indeed quite opposite, stories, notes made at times not far enough apart to allow for anything like a complete change of opinion on the part of the critic, it is clear that conditions of light go so far towards the effect of gla.s.s, that it is quite impossible to appraise it fairly the first time one sees it. The more momentary the impression on which one has to found an opinion, the more essential it is that we should choose the moment. The strongest light is by no means the most favourable to gla.s.s. In a glare of sunlight it is quite probable that some unhappy windows will have more light shining upon than comes through the gla.s.s.

Happiest are the windows seen by "the subdued light of a rainy day."

Occasionally a window, so deep that under ordinary conditions of light it is obscure, may need the strongest possible illumination; but even in the case of very deep-toned windows--such, for example, as those in the transepts of the Duomo at Florence--the gla.s.s, as a whole, is best seen by a sober light. You get the maximum of colour effect with the minimum of hurt to any individual window, if there be any hurt at all. A really garish window may be beautiful as the light wanes. The great North Rose at Notre Dame (Paris) is impressive at dusk.

Other conditions upon which the effect of gla.s.s largely depends are quite beyond our control. As a matter of fact, we rarely see it at its best. For one thing, we do not see it in sufficient quant.i.ty. We find it in here and there a window only, white light shining unmitigated from windows all round. Perhaps in the window itself there is a breakage, and a stream of light pours through it, spoiling, if not its beauty, all enjoyment of it. It is not generally understood how completely the effect of gla.s.s depends upon the absence of light other than that which comes through it. Every ray of light which penetrates into a building excepting through the stained gla.s.s does injury to the coloured window; more often than not, therefore, we see it under most adverse circ.u.mstances. It is worse than hearing a symphony only in s.n.a.t.c.hes; it is rather as if a more powerful orchestra were all the while drowning the sound. It takes an expert to appreciate gla.s.s when light is reflected upon it from all sides. The effect of some of the finest gla.s.s in Germany, as at Munich and Nuremberg, is seriously marred by a wicked German practice of filling only the lower half of the window with coloured gla.s.s and glazing the upper part in white rounds. That enables folk to read their Bibles, no doubt; but the volume of crude white light above goes far to kill the colour of the gla.s.s. In such case it is not until you have shut off the offending light that it is possible to enjoy, or even to appreciate, the windows.

A comparatively dark church is essential to the perfect enjoyment of rich gla.s.s. The deep red light-absorbing sandstone of which Stra.s.sburg and Shrewsbury Cathedrals are built, adds immensely to the brilliancy of their beautiful gla.s.s.

White light is the most cruel, but not the only, offender. Old gla.s.s sometimes quarrels with old gla.s.s. An Early window is made to look heavy by a quant.i.ty of Late work about it, and a Late window pales in the presence of deep rich Early gla.s.s. As for modern work, it is that which suffers most by comparison with old; but it arouses often a feeling of irritation in us which puts us out of the mood to enjoy.

Worst offence of all is that done in the name of restoration, where, inextricably mixed up with old work, is modern forgery; not clever enough to pa.s.s for old, but sufficiently like it to cast a doubt upon the genuine work, at the same time that it quite destroys its beauty.

Something of our appreciation depends upon the frame of mind in which we come to the windows. They may be one of the sights of the place; but the sight-seeing mood is not the one in which to appreciate. How often can the tourist sit down in a church with the feeling that he has all the day before him, and can give himself up to the enjoyment of the gla.s.s, wait till it has something to say to him? A man has not seen gla.s.s when he has walked round the church, with one eye upon it and the other on his watch, not even though he may have made a note or two concerning it.

You must give yourself up to it, or it will never give up to you the secret of its charm.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

WINDOWS WORTH SEEING.