Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 4

Moreover, it could be as readily traced in lines or little touches of colour as it could be floated on in broad surfaces. By its aid it was as easy to render the white pearls on a bishop's golden mitre as to give the golden hair of a white-faced angel, or to relieve a white figure against a yellow ground--and all without the use of intervening lead.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 36. DIAPER IN WHITE AND STAIN, ALL SAINTS' CHURCH, YORK.]

It is not surprising that such a discovery had a very important effect upon the development of the gla.s.s painter's practice. By means of it were produced extraordinarily beautiful effects, as of gold and silver, peculiarly characteristic of later Gothic work. The crockets and finials of white canopies would be touched with it as with gold, the hair of angels and the crowns of kings; or the nimbus itself would be stained, the head now being habitually painted on one piece of white gla.s.s with the nimbus. The crown and the pearl-edged head-band of the Queen of Sheba, from Fairford, (page 50), are stained upon the white gla.s.s out of which the head is cut. In the figure of S. Gregory on page 51 the triple crown is stained yellow, and so is the nimbus of the bull, whose wings also are shaded in stain varying from light to dark.

Of the elaborate diapering of white drapery, with patterns in rich stain, more and more resorted to as the fifteenth century advanced, a specimen is here given, in which the design is figured in white upon a yellow ground, outlined with a delicately traced line of brown. Stain was seldom used on white without such outline.

In the end white and stain predominated. Early gla.s.s was likened to jewellery; now the jewels seem to be set in gold and silver. There was a loss in dignity and grandeur, but there was a gain in gaiety and brightness. How far stain encouraged the more abundant use of white gla.s.s which prevailed in the fifteenth century it might be rash to say; at any rate, it fitted in to perfection with the tendency of the times, which was ever more and more in the direction of light, until the later Gothic windows became, in many instances, not so much coloured windows as windows of white and stain enclosing panels or pictures in colour.

Even in these pictures very often not more than about one-third of the gla.s.s was in rich colour. And not only was more white gla.s.s used, but the white itself was purer and more silvery, lighter, and at the same time thinner, giving occasion and excuse for that more delicate painting which perhaps was one great reason for the change in its quality. At all events, the more transparent character of the material necessitated more painting than was desirable in the case of the hornier texture of the older make. Hence the prevalence of diaper already referred to.

By the latter half of the fifteenth century painting plays a very important part in stained gla.s.s windows. We have arrived at a period when it is no longer subsidiary to mosaic; still it has not yet begun to take precedence of it. The artist is now a painter, and he relies for much of his effect upon painting; but he is a glazier, too, and careful to make the most of what gla.s.s can do. He designs invariably with a view to the glazing of his design, and with full knowledge of what that means. He knows perfectly well what can be done in gla.s.s, and what cannot. He has not yet carried painting to the perfection to which it came eventually to be carried, but neither has he begun to rely upon it for what can best be done in mosaic. He can scarcely be said to prefer one medium to another; he uses both to equally workmanlike purpose. He does not, like the early glazier, design in lead any longer, but neither does he leave the consideration of leading till after he has designed his picture, as painters came subsequently to do.

It amounts, it might be thought, to much the same thing whether the artist begins with his lead lines and works up to his painting, as at first he did, or begins with his painting and works up to the leads, as became the practice,--so long as in either case he has always in mind the after-process, and works with a view to it. But the truth seems to be that few men have ever a thing quite so clearly in their minds as when they have it in concrete form before their eyes. The glazier may reckon upon the paint to come, but he does not rely upon it quite so much as the painter who starts with the idea of painting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 37. NATIVITY, GREAT MALVERN.]

The later Gothic artists gradually got into the way of thinking more and more of the painting upon their gla.s.s. In the end, they thought of it first, and there resulted from their doing so quite a different kind of design, apart from change due to modifications of architectural style; but so long as the Gothic tradition lasted--and it survived until well into the sixteenth century, in work even which bears the brand of typical Renaissance ornament--so long the glazing of a window was in no degree an after-thought, something not arranged for, which had to be done as best it might. It is apparent always to the eye at all trained in gla.s.s design that the composition even of the most pictorial subjects was very much modified, where it was not actually suggested, by considerations of glazing. As more and more white gla.s.s came to be used, it was more and more a tax upon the ingenuity of the designer so to compose his figures that his white should be conveniently broken up, and the patches of colour he wanted should be held in place by leads which in no way interfered with his white gla.s.s; for it is clear that, in proportion as the white was delicately painted, there would be brutality in crossing it haphazard by strong lines of lead not forming part of the design; and to the last one of the most interesting things in mediaeval design is to observe the foresight with which the gla.s.s-worker plans his colour for the convenience of glazing.

There is very skilful engineering in the subject from Ross on page 339.

It is not by accident that the hands of the hooded figure rest upon the shoulders of S. Edward, or that, together with his gold-brocaded surcoat and its ermine tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, his hands, and the gilt-edged book he holds in them, they fall into a shape so easy to cut in one piece. Scarcely less artful is the arrangement of the head of the bishop with his crosier and the collar of his robe all in one. The gla.s.s painter has only to glance at such subjects as the Nativity from Great Malvern (page 54), or the Day of Creation from the same rich abbey church (page 252), or at the figure of S. Gregory from All Souls', Oxford (page 51), to see how the colour is planned from the beginning, and planned with a view to the disposition of the lead lines. In the Nativity, which is reproduced from a faithful tracing of the gla.s.s, and is in the nature of a diagram, the actual map of the glazing is very clear, in spite of its disfigurement by leads which merely represent mending, and form no part of the design.

There, too, may clearly be seen how the yellow radiance from the Infant Saviour is on the same piece of whitish gla.s.s on which the figure is painted. In the Creation and S. Gregory, which are taken from careful water-drawings, the effect of the gla.s.s is given, and it is perceived how little the leads obtrude themselves upon the observation in the actual windows.[A]

Footnote A: These, together with ill.u.s.trations 35, 44, 54, 142, 156, 174, 191, 207, 234, are from the admirable collection of studies from old gla.s.s very kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. John R.

Clayton, himself a master of design in gla.s.s.

The Preaching of S. Bernard from S. Mary's, Shrewsbury, opposite, is again disfigured by accidental leads, where the gla.s.s has been repaired; but it will serve to show how, even when lead lines are as much as possible avoided, they are always allowed for, and even skilfully schemed. Many of the heads, it will be noticed, are painted upon the same pieces of white which does duty also for architectural background; or white draperies are glazed in one piece with the white-and-yellow flooring; yet the lead lines, as originally designed, seem to fall quite naturally into the outlines of the figures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 38. S. BERNARD PREACHING, S. MARY'S, SHREWSBURY.]

A very characteristic piece of glazing occurs in the foreground figure, forming a note of strong colour in the centre of the composition. The way the man's face is included in the same piece of gla.s.s with the yellow groining of the arch, while his coloured cap connects it with his body, bespeaks a designer most expert in glazing, and intent upon it always. The danger in connection with a device of this kind, very common in work of about the beginning of the sixteenth century--as, for example, in the very fine Flemish gla.s.s at Lichfield--is that, being merely painted upon a white background, and insufficiently supported by leads, the head may seem not to belong to the strongly defined, richly draped figure. It is, of course, very much a question of making the outline strong enough to keep the leads in countenance. The artist of the Shrewsbury gla.s.s adopts another expedient at once to support the lead lines, to connect his white and colour, and to get the emphasis of dark touches just where he feels the want of them. He makes occasional use of solid black by way of local colour, as may be seen in the hood of the abbess and the shoes of the men to the right.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 39. S. MARY'S, SHREWSBURY.]

In another subject from Shrewsbury (here given), in the bodice of the harpist, and the head gear of the figures on page 104, effective use is made of these points of black. So long as they remain mere points, the end justifies the means, and there is nothing to be said against their introduction; they are entirely to the good; but such use of solid pigment is valuable mainly in subjects of quite small size, such as these are. It would be obviously objectionable if any considerable area of white gla.s.s were thus obscured.

The gla.s.s referred to at Shrewsbury, Malvern, and Oxford is of later date than much work in which painting was carried further; but there is here no question of style or period; that is reserved for future consideration (Book II.). The fact it is here desired to emphasise is, that there was a time when glazier and painter took something like equal part in a window, or, to speak more precisely, there were for a while windows in which the two took such equal part that each seemed to rely upon the other; when, if the artist was a painter he was a glazier too.

Very likely they were two men. If so, they must have worked together on equal terms, and without rivalry, neither attempting to push his cleverness to the front, each regardful of the other, both working to one end--which was not a mosaic, nor a painting, nor a picture, but a window.

CHAPTER VI.

GLa.s.s PAINTING (MEDIaeVAL).

The end of the fifteenth century brings us to the point at which painting and glazing are most evenly matched, and, in so far, to the perfection of stained-and-painted gla.s.s, but not yet to the perfection of gla.s.s painting. That was reserved for the sixteenth century, when art was under the influence of the Renaissance. Gla.s.s painting followed always the current of more modern thought, and drifted picturewards.

Even in the fourteenth century it was seen that there was a fashion of naturalism in design, in the fifteenth there was an ever-increasing endeavour to realise natural form, and not natural form alone; for, in order to make the figure stand out in its niche, it became necessary to show the vault in perspective. It was obviously easier to get something like pictorial relief by means of painting than in mosaic, which accordingly fell by degrees into subordination, and the reign of the gla.s.s painter began. It must be admitted that at the beginning of the sixteenth century there was still room for improvement in painting, and that to the realisation of the then pictorial ideal stronger painting was actually necessary.

Perhaps the ideal was to blame; but even in Gothic gla.s.s, still severely architecturesque in design, more painting became, as before said, necessary, as greater use was made of white, and that painting stronger, in proportion as the material used became thinner and clearer. But though the aim of the gla.s.s painter was pictorial, the pictorial ideal was not so easily to be attained in gla.s.s; and so, though the painter reigned supreme, his dominion was not absolute. The glazier was in the background, it is true, but he was always there, and his influence is very strongly felt. The pictures of the gla.s.s painter are, consequently, still pictures in gla.s.s, for the painter was still dependent upon pot-metal for the greater part of his colour; and he knew it, and was wise enough to accept the situation, and, if he did not actually paint his own gla.s.s, to design only what could, at all events, be translated into gla.s.s. He not only continued to use pot-metal for his colour, but he made every possible use of it to his end, finding in it resources which his predecessors had not developed. His range of colours was extended almost indefinitely, and he used his gla.s.s with more discretion. He took every advantage of the accidental variety in the gla.s.s itself. No sheet of pot-metal was equal in tint from end to end; it deepened towards the selvedge, and was often much darker at one end than the other. It ranged perhaps from ruby to pale pink, from sea-green to smoky-black.

This gradation of tint wisely used was of great service in giving something like shadow without the aid of paint, and it was used with great effect--in the dragons, for example, which the mediaeval artist delighted to depict--as a means of rendering the lighter tones of the creature's belly. Supposing the beast were red, the gla.s.s painter would perhaps a.s.sist the natural inequality of the gla.s.s by abrading the ruby, by which means he could almost model the form in red. If it were a blue dragon he might adopt the same plan; or, if it were green, by staining his blue gla.s.s at the same time yellow, he could get every variety of shade from yellow to blue-green.

Every casual variety of colour would be employed to equal purpose. Even the gla.s.s-blower's flukes came in most usefully, not merely, as before, to break the colour of a background accidentally, but as local colour.

Sheets of gla.s.s, for example, which came out, instead of blue or ruby, of some indescribable tint, streaked and flecked with brighter and darker colour, until they were like nothing so much as marble, were introduced with magnificent effect into the pillars of the architecture which now formed so prominent a feature in window design. The beauty and fitness of this marble colour is eventually such as to suggest that the gla.s.s-blower must in the end deliberately have fired at this kind of fluke.

Beautiful as were the effects of white and stain produced in the middle of the fourteenth century, it was put now to fuller and more gorgeous use. Draperies were diapered in the most elaborate fashion; a bishop's cope would be as rich as the gold brocade it imitated; patterns were designed in two or even three shades of stain, which, in combination with white and judicious touches of opaque-brown, were really magnificent. Occasionally, as at Montmorency--but this is rarer--the painter did not merely introduce his varied stain in two or three separate shades, nor yet float it on so as to get accidental variety, but he actually painted in it, modelling his armour in it, until it had very much the effect of embossed gold.

In some ornamental arabesque, which does duty for canopy work at Conches, in Normandy, this painting in stain is carried still further, the high lights being sc.r.a.ped out so as to give glittering points of white among the yellow. The result of this is not always very successful; but where it is skilfully and delicately done nothing could be more brilliantly golden in effect. It is curious that this silver came to be used in gla.s.s just as goldleaf was used in other decorative painting; in fact, its appearance is more accurately described as golden than as yellow, just as the white gla.s.s of the sixteenth century has a quality which inevitably suggests silver.

It was stated just now that blue gla.s.s could be stained green. It is not every kind of gla.s.s which takes kindly to the yellow stain. A gla.s.s with much soda in its composition, for example, seems to resist the action of the silver; but such resistance is entirely a question of its chemical ingredients, and has only to do with its colour in so far as that may depend upon them.

Apart from gla.s.s of such antipathetic const.i.tution, it is quite as easy to stain upon coloured gla.s.s as upon white; and, if the coloured gla.s.s be not too dark in colour to be affected by it, precisely the same effect is produced as by a glaze or wash of yellow in oil or water-colour.

Thus we get blue draperies diapered with green, blue-green diapered with yellow-green, and purple with olive, in addition to quite a new development of landscape treatment. A subject was no longer represented on a background of ruby or dense blue, but against a pale grey-blue gla.s.s, which stood for sky, and upon it was often a delicately painted landscape, the trees and distant hills stained to green. Stain was no less useful in the foreground. By the use of blue gla.s.s stained, instead of pot-metal green, it was easy to sprinkle the green gra.s.s with blue flowers, all without lead.

It was by the combination of stain with abrasion that the most elaborately varied effects were produced. The painter could now not only stain his blue gla.s.s green (and just so much of it as he wanted green), but he could abrade the blue, so as to get both yellow, where the gla.s.s was stained, and white where it was not. Thus on the same piece of gla.s.s he could depict among the gra.s.s white daisies and yellow b.u.t.tercups and bluebells blue as nature, he could give even the yellow eye of the daisy and its green calyx; and, by judicious modification of his stain, he could make the leaves of the flowers a different shade of green from the gra.s.s about them. The drawing of the flowers and leaves and blades of gra.s.s, it need hardly be said, he would get in the usual way, tracing the outline with brown, slightly shading with half tint, and painting out only just enough of the ground to give value to his detail.

In spite of the tediousness of the process, abrasion was now largely used--not only for the purpose of getting here and there a spot of white, as in the eyes of some fiery devil in the representation of the Last Judgment, but extensively in the form of diaper work, oftenest in the forms of dots and spots (the spotted petticoat of the woman taken in adultery in one of the windows at Arezzo seems happily chosen to show that she is a woman of the people), but also very frequently in the form of scroll or arabesque, stained to look like a gold tissue, or even to represent a garment stiff with embroidery and pearls. Often the pattern is in gold-and-white upon ruby or deep golden-brown, or in white-and-gold and green upon blue, and so on. In heraldry it is no uncommon thing to see the ground abraded and the charge left in ruby upon white. Sometimes a small head would be painted upon ruby gla.s.s, all of the colour being abraded except just one jewel in a man's cap.

Stain and abrasion, by means of which either of the three primaries can be got upon white, afford, it will be seen, a workmanlike way of avoiding leadwork. But there are other ways. There is a window at Montmorency in which the stigmata in the hands and foot of S. Francis are represented by spots of ruby gla.s.s inlaid or let into the white flesh, with only a ring of lead to hold them in place. It would never have occurred to a fourteenth century glazier to do that. He would have felt bound to connect that ring of lead with the nearest glazing lines, at whatever risk of marring his flesh painting; but then, his painting would not have been so delicate, and would not in any case have suffered so much.

Indeed, the more delicate painting implies a certain avoidance of lead lines crossing it, and hence some very difficult feats of glazing. This kind of inlaying was never very largely used, but on occasion not only a spot but even a ring of gla.s.s round it would be let in in this way.

There is a window at Bourges in which the glories of the saints are inlaid with jewels of red, blue, green, and violet, which have more the effect of jewellery than if they had been glazed in the usual way.

Whether it was worth the pains is another question.

A more usual, and less excusable, way of getting jewels of colour upon white gla.s.s was actually to anneal them to it. By abrading the ground it was possible to represent rubies or sapphires, surrounded by pearls, in a setting of gold, but not both rubies and sapphires. In order to get this combination they would cut out little jewels of red and blue, fix them temporarily in their place, and fire the gla.s.s until these smaller (and thinner) pieces melted on to and almost into it; the fusion, however, was seldom complete. At this date some of the jewels--as, for example, at S. Michael's, Spurrier Gate, York--are usually missing--but for which accident one would have been puzzled to know for certain how this effect was produced. The insecurity of this process of annealing is inevitable. Gla.s.s is in a perpetual state of contraction and expansion, according to the variation of our changeable climate. The white gla.s.s and the coloured cannot be relied upon to contract and expand in equal degree; they are seldom, in fact, truly married. The wedding ring of lead was safer. Sooner or later incompatibility of temper a.s.serts itself, and in the course of time they fidget themselves asunder.

All these contrivances to get rid of leads are evidence that the painter is coming more and more to the front in gla.s.s, and that the glazier is retiring more and more into the background. The avoidance of glazing follows, as was said, upon ultra-delicacy of painting, and dependence upon paint follows from the doing away with leads. We have thus not two new systems of work, but two manifestations of one idea--pictorial gla.s.s. The pictorial ideal inspired some of the finest gla.s.s painting--the windows of William of Ma.r.s.eilles, at Arezzo, to mention only one instance among many. With the early Renaissance gla.s.s we arrive at masterly drawing, perfection of painting, and pictorial design, which is yet not incompatible with gla.s.s. One may prefer to it, personally, a more downright kind of work; but to deny such work its place, and a very high place, in art is to write oneself down a bigot at the least, if not an a.s.s.

It is not until the painter took to depending upon paint for strength as well as delicacy of effect, trusting to it for the relief of his design, that it is quite safe to say he was on the wrong tack.

Towards the sixteenth century much more p.r.o.nounced effects of modelling are aimed at, and reached, by the painter. Even in distinctly Gothic work the flesh is strongly painted, but not heavily. In flesh painting, at all events, the necessity of keeping the tone of the gla.s.s comparatively light was a safeguard, as yet, against overpainting.

The actual method of workmanship became less and less like ordinary oil or water-colour painting. It developed into a process of rubbing out rather than of laying on pigment. It was told how the gla.s.s painter in place of smear shadow began to use a stippled tint. The later gla.s.s painters made most characteristic use of "matt," as it was called.

Having traced the outlines of a face, and fixed it in the fire, they would cover the gla.s.s with a uniform matt tint; and, when it was dry, with a stiff hoghair brush scrub out the lights. The high lights they would entirely wipe out, the half tints they would brush partly away, and so get their modelling, always by a process of eliminating shadow.

The conscientious painter who meant to make sure his delicate tints would stand would submit this to a rather fierce fire, out of which would come, perhaps, only the ghost of the face. This he would strengthen by another matt brushed out in the same way as before, and fire it again. Possibly it would require a third painting and a third fire; that would depend upon the combined strength and delicacy at which he was aiming, and upon the method of the man. For, though one may indicate the technique in vogue at a given time, no one will suppose that painters at any time worked all in the same way. Some men no doubt could get more out of a single painting than others out of two; some were daring in their method, some timid; some made more use than others of the stick for sc.r.a.ping out lines of light; some depended more upon crisp touches with the sable "tracer," necessary, in any case, for the more delicate pencilling of the features; some would venture upon the ticklish operation of pa.s.sing a thin wash of colour over matt or stippling before it was fired, at the risk of undoing all they had done--and so on, each man according to his skill and according to his temperament. But with whatever aid of scratching out lights, or touching in darks, or floating on tints, the practice in the sixteenth century was mainly, by a process of scrubbing lights out of matted or washed tints of brown, to get very considerable modelling, especially in flesh painting and in white draperies.

It is impossible in ill.u.s.trations of the size here given to exemplify in any adequate manner the technique of the Early Renaissance gla.s.s painters, but it is clear that the man who painted the small subject from the life of S. Bonnet, in the church dedicated to that saint at Bourges, (page 210) was a painter of marked power. A still finer example of painting is to be found in the head of William de Montmorency (opposite) from the church of S. Martin at Montmorency near Paris, really a masterpiece of portraiture, full of character, and strikingly distinguished in treatment. There is at the Louvre a painting of the same head which might well be the original of the gla.s.s. If the gla.s.s painter painted the picture he was worthy to rank with the best painters of his day. If the gla.s.s painter only copied it, he was not far short of that, for his skill is quite remarkable; and the simple means by which he has rendered such details as the chain armour and the collar, and the Order of S. Michael, supplementing the most delicate painting with touches of opaque colour, which in less skilful hands would have been brutal, show the master artist in gla.s.s painting.

Here, towards the end of the first quarter of the sixteenth century, we have gla.s.s painting carried about as far as it can go, and yet not straying beyond the limits of what can best be done in gla.s.s. The apologists for the Renaissance would attribute all such work as this to the new revival. That would be as far wide of the mark as to claim for it that it was Gothic. The truth is, there is no marked dividing line between Gothic and Renaissance. It is only by the character of some perhaps quite slight monumental or architectural detail that we can safely cla.s.sify a window of the early sixteenth century as belonging to one or the other style. It belongs, in fact, to neither. It is work of the transition period between the two. Gothic traditions lingered in the gla.s.s painter's shop almost as long as good work continued to be done there; so much so, that we may almost say that with those Gothic traditions died the art itself. For all that, it is not to be disputed that the most brilliant achievements in gla.s.s painting were certainly in the new style and inspired by the new enthusiasm for art.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 40. GUILLAUME DE MONTMORENCY, MONTMORENCY.]