Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 3

Something, however, had to be done to prevent especially the whites, yellows, and pale blues, and in some degree all but the dark colours, from taking more than their due part in the general effect. It was not always possible to reduce the area of the gla.s.s of an aggressive tint to the dimensions required. To have reduced a line of white, for example, to the narrowness at which it would tell for what was wanted, would have been to make it so narrow that the acc.u.mulation of dust and dirt between the leads would soon have clogged it and blotted it out altogether. What they did was to paint it heavily with pattern. For example, they would paint out great part of a white line and leave only a row of beads, with so much paint between and around them that certainly not more than one-third of the area of the gla.s.s was left clear, and the effect at the right distance (as at Angers, page 116) would be that of a continuous string of pearls. They would in the same way paint a strip of gla.s.s solid, and merely pick out a zig-zag or some such pattern upon it, with or without a marginal thread of light on each side (Le Mans). Rather than lower the brightness of the gla.s.s by a tint of pigment they would coat it with solid brown, and pick out upon it a minute diaper of cross-hatched lines and dots, by that means reducing the volume of transmitted light without much interfering with its purity (S. Remi, Reims, below). Diaper of more interesting kind afforded a ready means of lowering shades of gla.s.s which were too light or too bright for the purpose required, and for supplying in effect the deficiencies of the pot-metal palette. Overleaf are some fragments of diaper pattern so picked out, from Canterbury, which would possibly never have been devised if the designer had had to his hand just the shade of blue gla.s.s he wanted. Something certainly of the elaboration of pattern which distinguishes the earliest gla.s.s comes of the desire to qualify its colour. Viollet le Duc endeavours to explain with scientific precision which are the colours which spread most, and how they spread.

His a.n.a.lysis is useful as well as interesting; but absolute definition of the effect of radiation is possible only with regard to a rigidly fixed range of colours to which no colourist would ever confine himself.

A man gets by experience to know the value of his colours in their place, and thinks out his scheme accordingly. He puts, as a matter of course, more painting into pale draperies than into dark, and so on; but to a great extent he acts upon that subtle sort of reasoning which we call feeling. Intuition it may be, but it is the intuition of a man who knows.

The simple method of early execution went hand in hand with equal simplicity of design--the one almost necessitated the other--and the earlier the window the more plainly is its pattern p.r.o.nounced, light against dark, or, less usually, (as in some most interesting remains of very early gla.s.s from Chalons now at the _Musee des Arts Decoratifs_ at Paris) in full, strong colour upon white. In twelfth century work especially, figures and ornament alike are always frankly shown _en silhouette_. Witness the design on pages 33 and 115. Similar relief or isolation of the figure against the background is shown in the thirteenth century bishops, occupying two divisions of a rose window at Salisbury, on page 275; and again in the little subject from Lyons, where S. Peter is being led off by the gaoler to prison.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 23. CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.]

In proportion as the aim of the artist becomes more pictorial he groups his figures more in clumps (you see indications of that at Canterbury), whence comes much of the confusion of effect characteristic of the thirteenth century as it advances, not in this respect in the direction of improvement. In his haste to tell a story he tells it less effectively. Where an early subject is unintelligible (supposing it to be in good preservation) it is almost invariably owing to the figures not being clearly enough cut out against the background. Isolation of the design seems to be a necessary condition of success in gla.s.s of the simple, scarcely painted, kind. In ornament, where the artist had nothing to think of but artistic effect, he invariably and to a much later period defined it unmistakably against contrasting colour. That is ill.u.s.trated on page 117, part of a thirteenth century window at Salisbury, and in the border below, as well as various others of the period, pages 129, 130, and elsewhere.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 24. POITIERS CATHEDRAL. (Compare with 59.)]

It is the almost unanimous verdict of the inexpert that the lead lines very seriously detract from the beauty of early windows. How much more beautiful they would be, it is said, without those ugly black lines!

Possibly the expert and the lover of old gla.s.s have unconsciously brought themselves not to see what they do not want to see; and the leads may, soberly and judiciously speaking, seriously interfere with the form of the design. But, in the first place, the beauty of early gla.s.s is in its colour, not in its form. That is very clearly shown in the ill.u.s.trations to this chapter and the next; which give, unfortunately, nothing of the beauty and real glory of the gla.s.s, but only its design and execution; they appear perhaps in black and white so merely grotesque, that it may be difficult to any one not familiar with the gla.s.s itself to understand why so much should be said in its praise.

In reality the lack of beauty, especially apparent in the figure drawing of the early gla.s.s painters when reduced to monochrome, taken in conjunction with the magnificent effect of many of the earliest windows (which no colourist has ever yet been known to deny) is proof in itself how entirely their art depended upon colour--colour, it should be added, of a quality quite unapproachable by any other medium than that of translucent gla.s.s or actual jewellery. No one who appreciates at anything like its full value the magnificence of that colour will think the interference of occasional lead lines a heavy price to pay for it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 25. S. KUNIBERT, COLOGNE.]

For--and this is the second point to be explained in reference to leading--the leads, were they never so objectionable, are actually the price we pay for the glory of early gla.s.s. It is by their aid we get those mosaics of pot-metal, the depth and richness of which to this day, with all our science of chemistry, we cannot approach by any process of enamelling. Moreover, though merely constructional leads, taking a direction contrary to the design, may at times disturb the eye, (they scarcely ever disturb the effect) they add to the richness of the gla.s.s in a way its unlearned admirers little dream. Not only is the depth and intensity of the colour very greatly enhanced by the deep black setting of lead, a veritable network of shade in which jewels of bright colour are caught, but it is by the use of a multiplicity of small pieces of gla.s.s (instead of a single sheet, out of which the drapery of a figure could be cut all in one piece--the ideal of the ignorant!), that the supreme beauty of colour is reached. Examine the bloom of a peach or of a child's complexion, and see how it is made up of specks of blue and grey and purple and yellow amongst the pink and white of which it is supposed to consist. Every artist, of course, knows that a colour is beautiful according to the variety in it; and a "Ruby" background (as it is usually called), which is made up of little bits of gla.s.s of various shades of red, not only crimson, scarlet, and orange, but purple and wine-colour of all shades from deepest claret to tawny port, is as far beyond what is possible in a sheet of even red gla.s.s as the colour of a lady's hand is beyond the possible compet.i.tion of pearl powder or a pink kid glove. Not only, therefore, were the small pieces of gla.s.s in early windows, and the consequent leads, inevitable, but they are actually at the very root of its beauty; and the artificer of the dark ages was wiser in his generation than the children of this era of enlightenment.

He did not b.u.t.t his head against immovable obstacles, but built upon them as a foundation. Hence his success, and in it a lesson to the glazier for all time--which was taken to heart (as will be shown presently) by craftsmen even of a period too readily supposed to have been given over entirely to painting upon gla.s.s.

Let there be no misunderstanding about what is claimed for the earliest windows. The method of mosaic, eked out with a minimum of tracing in opaque pigment, does not lend itself very kindly to picture; and it is in ornament that the thirteenth century glazier is pre-eminent. There is even something barbaric about the splendour of his achievement. Might it not be said that in all absolutely ornamental decoration there is something of the barbaric?--which may go to account for the rarity of real ornament, or any true appreciation of it, among modern people.

We might not have to scratch the civilised man very deep to reach the savage in him, but he is, at all events, sophisticated enough to have lost his unaffected delight in strong bright colours and "meaningless"

twistings of ornament. Be that as it may, the figure work of the thirteenth century window designer is distinctly less perfect than his scrolls and suchlike, partly, it is true, because of his inadequate figure drawing, but partly also because his materials were not well adapted to anything remotely like pictorial representation. The figures in his subjects have, as before said, to be cut out against the background in order to be intelligible. Hence a stiff and ultra-formal scheme of design, and also a certain exaggeration of att.i.tude, which in the hands of a _nave_ and sometimes almost childish draughtsman becomes absolutely grotesque. This is most strikingly the case in the larger figures, sometimes considerably over lifesize, standing all in a row in the clerestory lights of some of the great French cathedrals.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 26. LYONS.]

The scale of these figures gave opportunity (heads all-of-a-piece show that it did not actually make it a necessity) for glazing the faces in several pieces of gla.s.s; and it was quite the usual thing, as at Lyons (opposite) to glaze the flesh in pinkish-brown, the beard in white or grey or yellow or some dark colour--not seldom blue, which had at a distance very much the value of black--and the eyes in white. Sometimes even, as at Reims, the iris of the eye was not represented by a blot of paint but was itself glazed in blue. The effect of this might have been happier if the lines of the painting had been more of the same strength as the leads, and so strong enough to support them. As it is, the great white eyes start out of the picture and spoil it. They have a way of glaring at you fixedly; there is no speculation in their stare; they look more like huge goggles than live eyes. And it is not these only which are grotesque; the smaller figures in subject windows are, for the most part, rude and crude, to a degree which precludes one, or any one but an archaeologist _pur sang_, from taking them seriously as figure design. They are often really not so much like human figures as "bogies," ugly enough to frighten a child. What is more to be deplored is that they are so ugly as actually to have frightened away many a would-be artist in gla.s.s from the study of them--a study really essential to the proper understanding of his _metier_; for repellant as those bogey figures may be, they show more effectually than later, more attractive, and much more accomplished painting, the direction in which the gla.s.s painter should go, and must go, if he wants to make figures tell, say, in the clerestory of a great church.

Apart from the halo of sentiment about the earliest work--and who shall say how much of that sentiment we bring to it ourselves?--apart from the actual picturesqueness--and how much of that is due to age and accident?--there _is_ in the earliest gla.s.s a feeling for the material and a sense of treatment seldom found in the work of more accomplished gla.s.s painters. If there is not actually more to be learnt from it than from later and more consummate workmanship, there is at least no danger of its teaching a false gospel, as that may do.

From the grossest and most archaic figures, ungainly in form and fantastic in feature, stiff in pose and extravagant in action, out of all proportion to their place in the window, there are at least two invaluable lessons to be learnt--the value of broad patches of unexpected colour, interrupting that monotony of effect to which the best-considered schemes of ornament incline, and the value of simplicity, directness, and downright rigidity of design. Severity of design is essential to largeness of style; it brings the gla.s.s into keeping with the grandeur of a n.o.ble church, into tune with the solemn chords of the organ. Modern windows may sometimes astound us by their aggressive cleverness, the old soothe and satisfy at the same time that they humble the devout admirer.

The confused effect of Early gla.s.s (except when the figures are on a very large scale) is commonly described as "kaleidoscopic." That is not a very clever description, and it is rather a misleading one. For, except in the case of the rose or wheel windows, common in France, Early gla.s.s is not designed on the radiating lines which the kaleidoscope inevitably gives. It is enough for the casual observer that the effect is made up of broken bits of bright colour; and if they happen to occupy a circular s.p.a.ce the likeness is complete to him. But to know the lines on which an Early Gothic window was built, is to see, through all confusion of effect, the evidence of design, and to resent the implication of thoughtless mechanism implied in the word kaleidoscopic.

Nevertheless, little as the mediaeval glaziers meant it--they were lavish of the thought they put into their art--their gla.s.s does often delight us, something as the toy amuses children, because the first impression it produces upon us is a sense of colour, in which there is no too definite form to break the charm. There comes a point in our satisfaction in mere beauty (to some it comes sooner than to others--too soon, perhaps) at which we feel the want of a meaning in it--must find one, or our pleasure in it is spoilt; we even go so far as to put a meaning into it if it is not there; but at first it is the mysterious which most attracts the imagination.

And even afterwards, when the mystery is solved, we are not sorry to forget its meaning for a while, to be free to put our own interpretation upon beauty, or to let it sway us without asking why, just as we are moved by music which carries us we know not where, we care not.

CHAPTER V.

PAINTED MOSAIC GLa.s.s.

The gla.s.s so far vaguely spoken of as "Early" belongs to the period when the glazier designed his leads without thinking too much about painting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 27. CHARTRES.]

There followed a period when the workman gave about equal thought to the glazing and the painting of his window.

Then came a time when he thought first of painting, and glazing was a secondary consideration with him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 28. S. KUNIBERT, COLOGNE.]

According as we contemplate gla.s.s painting from the earlier or the later standpoint, from the point of view of gla.s.s or of painting, we are sure to prefer one period to the other, to glory perhaps in the advance of painting, or to regret the lesser part that coloured gla.s.s eventually plays in the making of a window. To claim for one or the other manner that it is the true and only way, were to betray the prejudice of the partizan. Each justifies itself by the masterly work done in it, each is admirable in its way. It is not until the painter began, as he eventually did, to take no thought of the gla.s.s he was using, and the way it was going to be glazed, that he can be said with certainty to have taken the downward road in craftsmanship. We shall come to that soon enough; meanwhile, throughout the Gothic period at least, he kept true to a craftsmanlike ideal, and never quite forsook the traditions of earlier workmanship; and until well into the fourteenth century he began, we may say, with glazing. In the fourteenth century borders overleaf and in the figure on page 47, no less than in the earlier examples on pages 43 and 46, the glazing lines fulfil a very important part in the design, emphasising the outlines of the forms, if they do not of themselves form an actual pattern. Naturally, once the glazier resorted to the use of paint, he schemed his leads with a view to supplementary painting, and had always a shrewd idea as to the details he meant to add; but it will be clear to any one with the least experience in design that a man might map out the leadwork of such borders as those shown below with only the vaguest idea as to how he was going to fill them in with paint, and yet be sure of fitting them with effective foliage. So the architectural canopies on pages 134, 135, 154, were pretty surely first blocked out according to their lead lines; and not till the design was thus mapped out in colour did the designer begin to draw the detail of his pinnacles and crockets. The invariable adherence to a traditional type of design made it the easier for him to keep in mind the detail to come. For he had not so much to imagine as to remember. He was free, however, always to follow any spontaneous impulse of design.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 29. S. OUEN, ROUEN.]

It was told in Chapter IV. how, in the beginning, pigment was used only to paint out the light, to emphasise drawing, and to give detail--such as the features of the face, the curls of the hair, and so on. That was the ruling idea of procedure. In practice, however, it is not very easy to paint perfectly solid lines on gla.s.s. At the end of a stroke always, and whenever the brush is not charged full of colour, the lines insensibly get thin, not perfectly opaque, that is to say; and so, in spite of himself, the painter would continually be obtaining something like translucency--a tint, in fact, and not a solid brown. Not to have taken advantage of this half tint, would have been to prove himself something less than a good workman, less than a reasonable one; and he did from the first help out his drawing by a smear of paint, more or less in the nature of shading. In flesh painting of the twelfth century (or attributed to that early date) there are indications of such shading, used, however, with great moderation, and only to supplement the strong lines of solid brown in which the face was mainly drawn. The features were first very determinedly drawn in line ("traced" is the technical term), and then, by way of shade, a slight sc.u.m of paint was added.

Still, in thirteenth century work, there is frequently no evidence of such shading; the painter has been quite content with the traced line.

In the fourteenth century a looser kind of handling is observed. The painter would trace a head in not quite solid lines of brown, and then strengthen them here and there with perfectly opaque colour, producing by that means a much softer quality of line. In any case, the painting until well into the century was at the best rude, and the half tint, such as it was, used, one may say, to be smeared on. Here again practice followed the line of least resistance. It was difficult with the appliances then in use to paint a gradated tint which would give the effect of modelling; and accordingly very little of the kind was attempted. Eventually, however, the painter began to stipple his smear of shadow, at once softening it and letting light into it.

Towards the end of the century this stippling process was carried a step further. It occurred to the workman to coat his gla.s.s all over (or all of it except what was meant to remain quite clear) with thin brown, and then, with a big dry brush, dab it until it a.s.sumed a granular or stippled surface (darker or lighter, according to the amount of stippling). This was not only more translucent than the smeared colour but more easily graduated, and capable of being so manipulated, and so softened at the edges, as readily to give a very fair amount of modelling. This shading was often supplemented by dark lines or hatchings put in with a brush, as well as by lines sc.r.a.ped out of the tint to lighten it. But in any case there was for a while nothing like heavy shading. Even in work belonging to the fifteenth century, and especially in English gla.s.s, as at York, Cirencester, Ross, &c., it is quite a common thing to find that the drawing is mainly in line, very delicately done, helped out by the merest hint of shading in tint. This gla.s.s is sometimes a little flat in effect, and it is not equal in force to contemporary foreign work; but it is peculiarly refined in execution, and it has qualities of gla.s.s-like sparkle and translucency which more than make amends for any lack of solidity in painting. Solidity is just the one thing we can best dispense with in gla.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 30. SALISBURY.]

A comparison of the two borders on pages 38 and 175, both German work, will show how little difference of principle there was between the thirteenth century craftsman and his immediate successor. The difference in style between the two is strikingly marked--the one is quite Romanesque in character, the detail of the other is comparatively naturalistic; but when you come to look at the way they are executed, the way the glazing is mapped out, the way the leads emphasise the outlines, whilst paint is only used to make out details which lead could not give--you will see that the new man has altered his mind more with regard to what he wants to do in gla.s.s than as to how he wants to do it.

Very much might be said with regard to the two figures on this page and the opposite. The French designer has departed from the archaic composition of the earlier Englishman, and put more life and action into his figure, but there is very little difference in the technique of the two men, less than appears in the ill.u.s.trations; for, as it happens, one drawing aims at giving the lines of the gla.s.s, the other at showing its effect. The fourteenth century figure on page 51 relies more than these last upon painting. The folds of the saint's tunic, for example, are not merely traced in outline, but there is some effect of modelling in them.

It will be instructive also to compare the fourteenth century hop pattern on page 173 with the fourteenth century vine on page 364, and the fifteenth century example on page 345. In the first the method of proceeding is almost as strictly mosaic as though it had been a scroll of the preceding century. Leaves, stalks, and fruits are glazed in light colour upon dark, and bounded by the constructional lines of lead. In the second, though the main forms are still outlined by the leads, much greater use is made of paint: the topmost leaf is in one piece of gla.s.s with the stalk of the tree, and all the leaves are relieved by means of shading. In the third the artist has practically drawn his vine scroll, and then thought how best he could glaze it; and the leads come very much as they may.

This last-mentioned proceeding is typical of a period not yet under discussion, but the second ill.u.s.trates very fairly the supplementary use of paint made in the fourteenth century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 31. S. URBAIN, TROYES.]

A rather unusual but suggestive form of fourteenth century glazing is shown on page 176. It was the almost invariable practice at this period, as in the preceding centuries, to distinguish the pattern, whether of scroll or border, by relieving it against a background of contrasting colour, usually light against dark; but here the border is varicoloured, without other ground than the opaque pigment used for painting out the forms of the leaves, etc., and filling in between them. The method lends itself only to design in which the forms are so closely packed as to leave not too much ground to be filled in. A fair amount of solid paint about the leaves and stalks does no harm. A good deal was used in Early work, and it results in happier effects than when minute bits of background are laboriously leaded in. The main point is--and it is one the early glaziers very carefully observed--that the gla.s.s through which the light is allowed to come should not be made dirty with paint. It was mentioned before (page 35) how, from the first, a background would be painted solid and a diaper picked out of it. Further examples of that are shown overleaf and on pages 88 and 103, though, as will be seen, a considerable portion of the gla.s.s is by this means obscured, the effect is still brilliant; and in proportion as lighter and brighter tints of gla.s.s came into use, it became more and more necessary; in fact, it never died out. The diaper opposite belongs to the fifteenth century, and the minuter of the three diapers above, as well as those on pages 88 and 103, belong to the sixteenth century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 32. DIAPERS SCRATCHED OUT.]

Now that the reader may be presumed to have a perfectly clear idea of the process of the early glazier, and to realise the distinctly mosaic character of old gla.s.s, it is time mention should be made of two important intermediate methods of gla.s.s staining which presently began to affect the character of stained gla.s.s windows.

Allusion has been made (page 2) to the Roman practice of making gla.s.s in strata of two colours, which they carved cameo-fashion in imitation of onyx and the like; at least, one _tour de force_ of this kind is familiar to every one in the famous Portland vase, in which the outer layer of white gla.s.s is in great part ground away, leaving the design in cameo upon dark blue. The mediaeval gla.s.s-blower seems from the first to have been acquainted with this method of coating a sheet of gla.s.s with gla.s.s of a different colour. As the Roman coated his dull blue with opaque white gla.s.s, so he coated translucent white with rich pot-metal colour. It was not a very difficult operation. He had only to dip his lump of molten white into a pot of coloured gla.s.s, and, according to the quant.i.ty of coloured material adhering to it, so his bubble of gla.s.s (and consequently the sheet into which it was opened out) was spread with a thinner or thicker skin of colour. The Gothic craftsman took advantage of this facility, in so far as he had any occasion for its use. The occasion arose owing to the density of the red gla.s.s he employed, which was such that, if he had made it of the thickness of the rest of his gla.s.s, it would have been practically opaque. To have made it very much thinner would have been to make it more fragile; and in any case, it was easier to make a good job of the glazing when the gla.s.s was all pretty much of a thickness. A layer of red upon white offered a simple and practical way out of the difficulty.

What is called "ruby" gla.s.s, therefore, is not red all through, but only throughout one half or a third of its thickness. The colour is only, so to speak, the jam upon the bread; but the red and the white gla.s.s are amalgamated at such a temperature as to be all but indivisible, to all intents and purposes as thoroughly one as ordinary pot-metal gla.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 33. DIAPER SCRATCHED OUT.]

For a long while gla.s.s painters used this ruby gla.s.s and a blue gla.s.s made in the same way precisely as though it had been self-coloured. But in shaping a piece of ruby gla.s.s, especially with their inadequate appliances, they would be bound sometimes to chip off at the edges little flakes of red, revealing as many little flaws of white. This would be sure to suggest, sooner or later, the deliberate grinding away of the ruby stratum in places where a spot of white was needed smaller than could conveniently be leaded in. As to the precise date at which some ingenious artist may first have used this device, it may be left to archaeology to speculate. It must have been a very laborious process; and the early mediaeval ideal of design was not one that offered any great temptation to resort to it during the thirteenth or even the fourteenth century. It was not, in fact, until the painting of windows was carried to a point at which there was some difficulty in so scheming the lines of the lead that they should not in any way mar its delicacy, that the practice of "flashing" gla.s.s, as it is termed, became common. That is why no mention of it has been made till now. It will be seen that it is a perfectly practical and workmanlike process, rendering possible effects not otherwise to be got in gla.s.s, but lending itself rather to minuteness of execution and elaboration of detail than to splendour of colour or breadth of effect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 34. QUEEN OF SHEBA, FAIRFORD.]

The second intermediate method of staining gla.s.s began earlier to affect the design and execution of windows; and the character of fourteenth century gla.s.s is distinctly modified by it; and, curiously enough, whilst flashing applied to red and blue gla.s.s, this applies to yellow.

It was discovered about the beginning of the fourteenth century that white gla.s.s painted with a solution of silver would take in the kiln a pure transparent stain of yellow, varying, according to its strength and the heat of the furnace, from palest lemon to deepest orange. Observe that this yellow stain is neither an enamel nor a pot-metal colour, but literally a stain, the only stain used upon gla.s.s. In pot-metal the stain (if it may be so called) is _in_ the gla.s.s, this is _upon_ it. But it is absolutely indelible; it can only be removed with the surface of the gla.s.s itself; time has no more effect upon it than if the gla.s.s were coated with yellow pot-metal. This silver stain was not only of a singularly pure and delicate colour, compared to which pot-metal yellows were hot and harsh, but it had all the variety of a wash of water-colour, shading off by imperceptible degrees from dark to light, and that so easily that the difficulty would have been in getting a perfectly flat tint.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 35. S. GREGORY, ALL SOULS' COLLEGE, OXFORD.]