Poitiers.58.Poitiers.
The student need not very seriously concern himself about dates or names. People are much too anxious to get a term for everything, and when they can use the term glibly they fancy they know all about the thing. It is no doubt easier to commit to memory a few names and a few dates than to know anything about a craft; but the one accomplishment will not do in place of the other. A very little real knowledge of art or practical workmanship will lead you to suspect, what is the truth, that there is a good deal of fee-fi-fo-fum about the jargon of styles. It is handy to talk of old work as belonging to this or that broadly marked historic period; and it is well worth the while of any one interested in the course of art to master the characteristics of style. The student should master them as a matter of course; but he must not take the consideration of period for more than it is worth. Really we give far too muchattention to these fashions of bygone days—fashions, it must be allowed, on a more or less colossal scale, compared to ours, but still only fashions.
It is proposed then to allude here only so far to the styles as may be necessary to explain the progress of design, and especially the design of stained glass windows.
Poitiers East Window.59.Poitiers East Window.(Compare with24.)
In dividing Gothic into Early, Middle, and Late Gothic, corresponding roughly with the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, it is not forgotten that there is an earlier Gothic of the twelfth and perhaps eleventh centuries, more or less reminiscent of the Romanesque period preceding it; but English glass begins, to all intents and purposes, with the thirteenth century, and even in France there is not a very great quantity of characteristically earlier glass. What there is differs from thirteenth century work mainly in the Romanesque character of the figure drawing and ornamental detail, in its deliberately simple composition, and in the spontaneity of its design. The glazier was still feeling his way. Any composition to be found in a Byzantine ivory-carving, enamel, illuminated manuscript, or what not, might just as well occur in glass. The more familiar types of early Gothic window design had not yet settled down into orthodoxy. The lines on which the oldest windows extant were set out are in the main those of the thirteenth century also. They were more or less suggested by the shape of the window opening, which, it will be seen, had always had a good deal to say as to the direction glass design should take.
Poitiers, North Transept.60.Poitiers, North Transept.
The window openings in Romanesque or Norman-French churches were single lights, round or pointed arched, rather broad in proportion to their width. Stained glass, it has been explained, has to be held in its place by copper wires, soldered to the leadwork, and attached to iron bars let into the masonry for that purpose. In the case of a very narrow lancet, such bars would naturally be placed at convenient intervals across the opening. But for the most part windows were the reverse of narrow, and the horizontal bars had to be supplemented by vertical stanchions, so that the window space was divided into rectangular divisions. As a matter of construction the glass wasmade in panels, corresponding to these, and attached to them. It is not surprising, therefore, that these divisions should often have been accepted as part of the design, or that the design of the glass should to some extent have followed them. Onpage 113is the skeleton of the upper part of a twelfth century window. The strong black lines in the diagram show the bars, the finer ones indicate the main divisions of the design of the glass. It will be seen that the four strips into which the upright bars divide the window are not equal, but that the outer divisions are narrower than the inner, so as to accommodate themselves to the width of the border. Naturally that was determined always by the proportion of the window; such borders measured often one-sixth part, or more, of the entire width. The way in which the central circular shape in the glass breaks across in front of the border is an instance of the spontaneity and unexpectedness of design characteristic of the earliest existing work; later one series of forms would repeat themselves without interruption throughout the length of the window. When, asabove, the centre of a window is occupied by a great crucifix, or, asbelow, other such irregularity occurs, it is safe to conclude that the glass, if not prior to the thirteenth century, belongs to its first years. It is characteristic of the very early date of the glass that the bars in the diagrams given do not go out of their way to follow the outline of the circles, vesicas, quatrefoils, and other shapes, but on occasion cut relentlessly across them.
The filling out of such a skeleton as those given would in many respects be much the same in the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenthcentury; and in each case it would be in direct pursuance of the traditions of Early Christian design. You may see in Byzantine ivories and enamels precisely the kind of thing that was done in glass; and in the Romanesque Michaelis Kirche at Hildesheim, is a painted roof, the design of which might have been carried out, just as it is, in a giant window.
Border, Angers.
61 and 62.Border, Angers.
The main divisions of the centre part of such a window would each contain its little “subject” or glass picture; the border and the interstices between the pictures would be occupied with foliated ornament; only, the earlier the work, the more pronounced would be the Romanesque character, alike of the ornament and the figure work. The broad borders from Angers,above, and the narrower one from Le Mans (page 327) differ materially from the accepted thirteenth century type (page 117). Witness how in the Angers glass the stalks of the foliage frame little panels in the border, and how in the Le Mans work the stalks take the form of straps, patterned with painted ornament. This elaboration of the stalks with painted zig-zag, pearlwork, and so on, is precisely the kind of thing one sees in Byzantinecarving and inlay. The very early spandril from Angers,below, if not markedly Romanesque in character is yet not of the distinctively Early Gothic type.
Angers.63.Angers.
The shape of each medallion would be emphasised by a series of coloured lines or fillets framing it. In quite early work the broader of these would be broken up into blocks of alternating colour; they would be patterned probably (which in the thirteenth century they would probably not be), and altogether the effect of the ornament would be more jewelled. One of these broken and patterned margins is shown in the vesica-shaped framing to the figure onpage 37—belonging, by the way, to the window given in skeleton onpage 114.
The difference between twelfth and thirteenth century pictures is in the lingering of Byzantine traditions of design in the earlier work, and in the strictly simple disposition of the figuresen silhouetteagainst the background, as well as in the way the drapery is wrapped closely round them, so that the figure always explains itself. There is an expression and a “go” about some of the earliest figures for which we look in vain later in the thirteenth century. The figures of the Apostles from the Ascension at Le Mans onpage 33are altogether more alive than the thirteenth century bishops, for example, onpage 276, who seem by comparison tame and altogether respectable. A certain exaggeration there is, no doubt, about the action of these earliest figures, a certain brutality of rendering, as there is also a certain barbaric quality in the ornament, and, indeed, in the whole effect; but of its superlative richness there is no manner of doubt. One is even led to speculate, when one compares it with later work, whether a certain barbaric character of design does not go to that unrivalled brilliancy. In the absolute glory of rich colour the very earliest glass has never been equalled. The advance of glass painting was at the cost of this, perhaps barbaric, quality.
Early Ornament
64. EARLY ORNAMENT, SALISBURY.
In the earliest windows the subjects were not invariably enclosed in medallions; sometimes the square lines of thebars would be accepted as division enough; these would be framed with lines of colour, and the design of the portion of the window within the border would consist (as occasionally at Chartres) of a series of square subjects, each with its marginal lines, ranged one above the other. For the most part, however, the design of the earliest richly coloured windows extant took the shape of little pictures in panels or medallions. Another favourite scheme was to delineate the Tree of Jesse. The upper portion of such a window is given onpage 117; but further consideration of Jesse windows is reserved for a separate chapter.
Remi, Reims.65. S.Remi, Reims.
From the earliest period, no doubt, clerestory or other lights were often occupied each with a separate figure standing upright; but such of these as may remain in their places are not readily distinguishable from thirteenth century work; and the undoubtedly earlier figures—such, for example, as those in S. Remi at Reims—have been re-set in framework more or less old, but so as not to tell us anything very authentic about the setting out of the original windows. Again at Augsburg, where the figures in the clerestory are said to be the oldest in Germany (to belong, in fact, to about the year 1000), the windows are bordered with modern glazing in white. At Reims we have very rudely drawn figures in rich colour against a deep background, standing with splayed feet upon little rounds or half rings of colour, representing the earth, their names inscribed in bold lettering, which forms a band of yellow behind their heads. At Augsburg the figures, equally rude in drawing, equally splay-footed, are in white and colour upon a white ground. They stand upon littlehemispheres of Byzantine ornament, and their names are writ large in black letters upon the white glass around their heads. Presumably they were framed in a border of pattern work similar to that surrounding the medallion windows. The ornamental work in the windows at S. Remi may not always have formed part of the same window with the figure work—it does not go very happily with it now—but it is probably of about the same date; and it illustrates, together with some similar work at S. Denis, near Paris (so “thoroughly restored” as to have lost its historic value), a kind of pattern work peculiar to the earliest glass.
As a rule, early glass divides itself naturally into two classes: work in rich colour, which is what we have hitherto been discussing, and work in “grisaille,” as it is called; that is to say, in which the glass is chiefly white, or whitish, relieved only here and there by a line or a jewel of colour.
Occasionally, as at Auxerre, Reims, and Poitiers, rich figure work is found set in grisaille or framed by it; and in some fragments from Châlons, now at theMusée des Arts Décoratifsat Paris, coloured figures are found on a white ground.
You find also in France rich colour-work surrounded by white glass—the work of a period when the powers that were became possessed of the idea that they must lighten the interior of their churches, and accordingly removed so much of the coloured glass as seemed good to their ignorance, and replaced it with plain glazing. But, as a rule, and apart from the tinkering of the latter-day ecclesiastic, rich colour and grisaille were kept apart in early mediæval churches; that is to say, a coloured window has not enough white in it perceptibly to affect the depth and richness of its colour, nor a grisaille window enough colour to disturb the general impression of white light. At Reims and S. Denis, however, you find ornament in which white and colour are so evenly balanced that they belong to neither category. The amount of colour introduced into grisaille was never at any time a fixed quantity; one has to allow something for the predilection of the artist; but here the amount of colour makes itself so distinctly felt that the term grisaille no longer serves to express it.
The design of these patterns was of a rather mechanical type (pages 35,118,120) and not in any case very interesting; but it would have been difficult under any circumstances to produce avery satisfactory effect by so equally balancing white and colour. The designer falls between two stools. The well-known gryphon medallions at S. Denis seem at first to promise something rather amusing in design, but there is no variety in them:—and no wonder! the greater number of them prove to be new, and they have all been rearranged by Viollet le Duc. That is as much as to say, some of the gryphons are of Abbot Suger’s time, but the design of the window is Viollet le Duc’s. White and colour are again too evenly mixed in the heavy-looking English glass at Lincoln shown onpage 121, but that is of the thirteenth century.
It need hardly be said that the earlier the work, the simpler was the character of the painting, the more deliberately was pigment reserved for painting out the light, the more strictly was the shading in lines. But the painted detail was often small; glass was used in small pieces; subjects themselves were ordinarily small in scale. The largeness of effect was due first to the actual simplicity of the main lines of the design, and then to breadth of colour, a breadth of colour all the more remarkable seeing the small pieces of glass of which the broad surfaces were of necessity made up.
Of course, too, the earlier the work the more the design was influenced by the technique of glazing, the more clearly it can be seen how the glazier designed (as was explained onpage 44) in lead lines, and only made use of paint to fill them out.
S. Remi, Reims66.S. Remi, Reims.
In twelfth century glass the white was greenish and rather horny in texture; ruby was sometimes streaky, and often tawny or inclined to orange; blue varied from deep indigo to pale grey, occasionally it was of the colour of turquoise; yellow, dark or pale, was usually brassy; green ranged from bluish to pale apple, and from dull to emerald. These colours, with a rich brownish-purple, the lighter shades of which served always as flesh tint, made up the glazier’s palette. Happily there was considerable inequality of colour in the material. It deepened, for example, towards the selvage of the sheet where it was thickest; it had streaks and bubbles in it; no two batches ever came out of the pot quite alike; and altogether the rudely made pot-metal was chemically most imperfect and artistically all that glass should be.
Lincoln.67.Lincoln.
It would be rash in the extreme to formulate any theory as to early schemes of colour; probably the glazier’s main thought was to get somehow a deep, rich, solemn effect of colour. He secured this very often by not confusing his tints, and by allowing a single colour so to predominate that the window impressed you at once as bluish or greenish or reddish in tone. He was on the whole happiest when he kept his colour cool; but he produced also red windows which are never to be forgotten.
In the cathedral at Poitiers, where many of the beautiful medallion windows belong to the very early part of the thirteenth century, the scheme is usually to adopt a blue background,alike for the medallions and for the spaces between, relying upon a broad band of ruby, edged with white pearling, to mark the medallion shapes, which it effectively does; but these are not the most beautiful windows in the church. One recognises their date rather by the individuality and spontaneity of the design than by any distinctly Romanesque character in the detail. It should be mentioned, also, that at Poitiers, even in windows which seem not so emphatically to belong to the very beginning of the century, the early practice of using only straight upright and cross bars is adhered to. There may be something of local conservatism in that.
Bars in Early Medallion Windows.
68.Bars in Early Medallion Windows.
In the thirteenth century the practice of the earlier glaziers stiffened into something like a tradition, and design took almost inevitably the form of (1) the Medallion window, (2) the Single Figure window, (3) Ornamental Grisaille.
The full-blown thirteenth century Medallion window differed from what had gone before in that it was more orthodox. The designer begins as before by marking off a broad border to his glass, defined on the inner side by an iron bar, and proceeds to fill the space within the border with medallion shapes. But he now adapts the medallions more regularly to the spaces between the bars. At most two alternating shapes occur throughout the length of the light, without break or interruption, such as occurs in earlier work, and as a rule they keep strictly within the lines of the border. In all the nine examples here given, taken at random from Chartres, Bourges, Canterbury, and elsewhere, only in one case does a medallion cut boldly across the border in the head of the light. The slight overlapping of the quatrefoils in one case is not really an overlapping of the border but only of the marginal lines to it, not shown in the diagramabove, but clearly enough explained onpage 132, which shows the completion of a corner of the window, less its side border. In the window with large circular medallions divided into four, there is no upright bar to define the border, faintly indicated by a dotted line.
Bars in Early Medallion Windows.
69.Bars in Early Medallion Windows.
It will be seen from these diagrams, which illustrate at once the main divisions of the glass and the position of the ironwork, what a change came over the construction of windows in the thirteenth century. The window is no longer ruled off by upright and horizontal bars into panels into which the design is fitted; it is the bars which are made to follow the main lines of the design, and to emphasise the forms of the medallions. The rare exceptions to this rule (as at Bourges,overleaf) may generally be taken to betray either the beginning or the end of the period; but at Poitiers they seem to have passed through the early period without ever arriving at shaped bars. The early glazier, it was said, first blocked out his design according to his leading; here he begins with the bars. The iron framework forms, itself, in many of these windows, a quite satisfactorypattern, and one which proudly asserts itself in the finished window. The designs of the period are not of course all equally ingenious. Sometimes, in order to strengthen a circle or quatrefoil of great size, the glazier, instead of breaking up the shape ornamentally as was the rule, merely supports it by cross bars; not only that, but he accepts the awkward shapes given by them as separate picture spaces. Of this comes one of two evils: either he frames his little pictures with sufficient border lines to keep them distinct, and so draws attention to the shapes, an attention they do not deserve; or he has to accept the bars, with perhaps a fillet of colour, as sufficient frame, which they are not, and his pictures run together, to the bewilderment of whoever would decipher them.
Spandrils of Medallion Window
70.Spandrils of Medallion Window, Bourges.
It is matter for regret that the French did not accept the full shape of even the largest medallion, and fill it with one bold subject; over and over again one feels that the subjects in medallion windows are not only too small to be readable, but so small that the figures are out of scale with the ornamental detail. The scale of the church has, of course, to be taken into account; but the French churches are big enough to warrant figures thrice the size of those which ordinarily occur in medallions. In our narrower “Early English” lancet windows the medallions naturally came small.
To divide a window into eccentric divisions (halves or quarters of circles, quatrefoils, and the like) and then to takethese awkward shapes as separate picture frames, is an archaic method of design much in need of excuse. The more reasonable thing to do would have been to make use of such incomplete forms only in some secondary position, and as framework for ornament, or at least quite subsidiary figures.
The Dream of Charlemagne71.The Dream of Charlemagne, Chartres.
Apart from shapes which are really only segments of medallions, the only awkward medallion shapes occurring in Early glass are those which are broader than they are high, such as occur, for example, at Soissons. These have always the uncomfortable appearance of having been crushed.
How the iron skeleton of a medallion window is filled out with leaded glass; how the border and the medallion shapes are strengthened by bands of colour; how the medallions themselves are occupied with little figure subjects, and how the interspaces are filled in with ornament, is indicatedoppositeand onpages 132,325.
By way of variation upon the monotony of design, the designer will sometimes reverse the order of things. At Bourges, for example, you will find the centre of a light devoted to insignificant and uninteresting ornament, whilst the figure subjects are edged out into half quatrefoils at the sides of the window; and, again, at Chartres and Le Mans you may occasionally see the pictures similarly ousted from their natural position by rather mechanical ornament. One can sympathise with an artist’s impatience with the too, too regular distribution of the stereotyped medallion window. There is undoubtedly a monotony about it which the designer is tempted to get rid of at any price; but consistency is a heavy price to pay for the slight relief afforded by the treatment just described.
This striving after strangeness results not only in very ugly picture shapes—no one would deliberately design such a shape as that which frames the picture of the Dream of Charlemagne (overleaf)—but it produces a very uncomfortable impression of perversity. It is quite conceivable that ornament may be better worth looking at than some pictures; but a picture refuses to occupy the subordinate position; it will not do as a frame to ornament. There is no occasion to illustrate very fully the design of Early figure medallions; they are often of very great interest, historical, legendary and human, but there is little variation in the system of design. The picture is of thesimplest, perhaps the baldest, kind. The figures, as before stated, are clearly defined against a strong background, usually blue or ruby; a strip or two of coloured glass represents the earth upon which they stand; a turret or a gable tells you that the scene is in a city; a foliated sprig or two indicate that it is out of doors, a forest, perhaps; a waving band of grey ornament upon the blue tells you that the blue background stands for sky, for this is a cloud upon it. The extremely ornamental form which conventional trees may assume is shown in Mr. T. M. Rooke’s sketch from a medallion at Bourges,opposite. In the medallions from Chartres (page 325) are instances of simpler and less interesting tree forms, and in the upper part of the larger of the two, a bank of conventional cloudwork. Explanatory inscriptions are sometimes introduced into the background, as in the dream of Charlemagne (above), or in the margin of the medallions, as in the Canterbury window onpage 132, fulfilling in either case an ornamental as well as an elucidatory function.
Detail from an Early Medallion.72.Detail from an Early Medallion.
In the Canterbury glass it will be seen the figures are more crowded than in the French work illustrated. This is not a peculiarity of English glass, but a mark of period; as a rule the clump or compact group of personages proclaims a later date than figures isolated against the background. There is no surer sign of very early work than the obvious display of the figures against the background, light against dark or dark against light. Another indication of the date of the Canterbury figures is that their draperies do not clingquite so closely about them as in figures (page 33) in which the Byzantine tradition is more plainly to be traced.
Canterbury.73.Canterbury.
There is no mistaking a medallion window, the type is fixed: within a border of foliated ornament a series of circles, quatrefoils, or other medallion shapes, for the most part occupied by figure subjects on a rather minute scale, and between these ornament again.
Beverley Minster.74.Beverley Minster.
The border might be wider or narrower, according to the proportion of the window, though a wide border was rather characteristic of quite early glass. A twelfth century border (Angers) will sometimes measure more than a quarter of the entire width of the window. The borders from Canterbury, Beverley, Auxerre, and Chartres (overleaf) are of the thirteenth. A border of sufficient dimensions will sometimes include medallion shapes as onpages 115,325, and even occasionally little subject medallions at intervals, or it may be half-circles, each containing a little figure; but such interruption of the running border is rare. In so far as it counts against monotony it is to the good.
Auxerre.75.Auxerre.
Chartres.76.Chartres.
In narrower windows, such as more frequently occur in thiscountry, where, as the Gothic style of architecture supplanted the Norman, lancet lights took a characteristically tall and slender shape, the border was reduced to less imposing proportions, as for example at Beverley;—there was no room for a wide frame to the medallions, nor any fear, it may be added, that these should be so large as to require breaking up into segments, as in much French glass, or at Canterbury: there the window openings, as was to be expected of a French architect, are more characteristically Norman than English in proportion. In a very narrow light in the one-time cathedral at Carcassonne the medallions break in front of a not very wide border; but then this, though a medallion window, belongs probably by date to the Second Gothic period.
S. Kunibert, Cologne.77.S. Kunibert, Cologne.
Medallions themselves may be simple or fantastic in shape. They may be devoted each to a single picture, or subdivided into a series of four or five; they may be closely packed, and supported by segments of other medallions, also devoted to figure work, or they may be separated by considerable intervals of ornament. The character of that ornament takes two distinct forms.
In the examples given (pages 132,325) it takes the form of foliated scrollwork, very much of a piece with the ornament in the borders, except that there is more scope for its growth. In actual detail it varies, according to its date and whereabouts, from something very much like Romanesque strapwork to the more or less trefoiled foliage typical of Early Gothic ornament, whether French or English. Further examples of the last are shown in the borders from Auxerre and Chartres (page 328). The one from Chartres illustrates the transition from the Romanesque; it is intermediate between the two. The borders from S. Kunibert’s, Cologne, are quite Romanesque in character, though theyare of the thirteenth century; but then it has to be remembered that the Romanesque style of architecture was flourishing on the Rhine long after the Gothic style had developed itself in France and England. Many of the details from Canterbury—which, by-the-bye, are almost identical with contemporary French ornament—show a lingering influence of the pre-Gothic period, but the scroll occupying the spandril onpage 132is pronouncedly of Early Gothic type. Of much the same character is the detail from Salisbury onpage 117, which forms no part of a medallion window, but more likely of a tree of Jesse.
It was in this ornamental kind of design that the thirteenth century glaziers were most conspicuously successful. One no longer feels here, as one does with regard to their figure work, that they mean much better than their powers enable them to do. And it is with scrollery of this kind, either growing free or springing from the margin of the medallion, that the Early English designers occupied the intervals between the medallions in their windows. In France it became the commoner practice to substitute for it a diaper of geometric pattern. Other expedients were occasionally adopted. There is a window at S. Denis in which there is foliated scrollwork on a background of geometric diaper, although this last is so much “restored” that, for all one can tell, Viollet le Duc may be entirely responsible for it.
French Mosaic Diapers.
78.French Mosaic Diapers.
Canterbury.79.Canterbury.
At Soissons is a window in which the interspaces between the medallions are filled with deep blue, broken only here and there by a spot of ruby; at Poitiers also the ornament in spandrils is often just a quatrefoil or so, barely foliated, if at all; at Bourges there is an instance of spandrils (page 125) occupied bybare curling stalks and rosette-like flowers; at Poitiers the bands which frame the medallions have a way of interlacing, not in the simple fashion shown in the example from Canterburybelow, but so as to form a kind of pattern in the spandrils in front of the geometric filling; and there are other variations on the accustomed medallion tunes; but as a rule the ornament consists either of the usual Early Gothic foliation, closely akin to that in the borders, such as is shown onpages 129,130,328,330, or of geometric pattern, such as is here given. The rarity of the mosaic diaper in this country may be gathered from the fact that in the whole series of Early medallion windows at Canterbury it is found only once, its frequency in France from the fact that in the choir alone of Bourges Cathedral it occurs in no less than twenty-two instances; again at Chartres, out of twenty-seven great windows, not more than four have scrollwork; at Poitiers, on the other hand, there is little geometric diaper, but the ornament is of the simplest, and barely foliated. This device of geometric diaper-filling was possibly inspired by the idea of utilising the small chips of precious glass, which, with the then method of working, must have accumulated in greatquantity. In any case, it must have been encouraged by that consideration, if not actually suggested by it. Apart from economy, which is a condition of craftsmanlike work, there does seem a sort of artistic logic in the use of merely geometric design for quite subordinate filling, to act as a foil to figure work; but there was no occasion to put the mosaic of fragments quite so regularly, not to say mechanically, together, as was the custom to do.
French Mosaic Diapers.
80.French Mosaic Diapers.
That is shown in a rather unusual instance in a window of the Lower Church at Assisi; there occurs there a diaper of circles with blue interstices, where the circles, though all alike painted with a star pattern, vary in colour in a seemingly accidental way, and are red, yellow, green, brown, just as it took the fancy of the glazier.
Detail of Medallion Window
81. DETAIL OF MEDALLION WINDOW, CANTERBURY.
It follows inevitably from the small scale on which these patterns are set out, and from the radiation of the coloured light, that unless very great discretion is exercised the rays get mixed, with a result which is often the reverse of pleasing. And the worst of it was that the French glaziers particularly affectioned a combination of red and blue most difficult to manage. A very favourite pattern consisted of cross bands of ruby (asabove), enclosing squares or diamonds of blue, with dots of white at the intersection of the ruby bands, which persists always in running to purple.
French Mosaic Diaper.82.French Mosaic Diaper.
Instances of this unpleasant cast of colour are of continual occurrence, but they are never otherwise than crude and plummy in effect. The rather unusual combination of red and green mosaic diaper occurs, however, pretty frequently at Carcassonne. The diapers illustrated indicate the variety of geometric pattern to be found at Bourges, Chartres, Le Mans, and Notre Dame at Paris, and elsewhere. In proportion as there is in them a preponderance of blue and ruby the effect is that of an aggressive purple. The safest plan seems to be in associating with the blue plenty of green, or with the ruby plenty of yellow glass; or a similar result may be obtained by the choice of a deep neutral blue and of an orange shade of red, taking care always that the two contrasting colours shall not be of anything like equal strength.
At the best these diapers compare very unfavourably withscrollwork. They are, in the nature of things, more monotonous and less interesting than a growth of foliage; they are apt also to run to gaudy colour, which by its mass overpowers the pictures set in it. Compare, in any French church, the windows in which there is geometric mosaic and those in which there is scrollwork; and, though they may be all of the same period, and presumably the work of the same men, you will almost certainly have to marvel how artists who at one moment hold you spellbound by the magic of their colour can in the next disturb your eyesight with a glare of purple produced by the parody of a Scotch plaid. Many of these diapers are very minute in scale; the smaller the scale on which they are designed the greater the certainty of the colours running together.
S. Peter delivered from Prison83.S. Peter delivered from Prison, Lyons.
It is to the very small scale of the figures, also, that the confusion of effect in medallion subjects, in spite of their comparatively flat treatment, is to be attributed. At Bourges, at Canterbury, everywhere, the medallion subjects are on far too minute a scale to be made out by mortals of ordinary patience, or, to speak accurately, impatience. Often, even in windows which come close enough to the eye for study, it is only the more conventionally familiar pictures which explain themselves readily; and those you recognise almost by anticipation. You have no difficulty in deciphering the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Ascension, and so on, because you expect to find them. A certain muddle of effect must be accepted as characteristic of medallion windows.
It is not to be wondered at, that, considering the difficulty of making out the ordinary medallion subjects in the lower windows, where they are usually found, some other scheme of composition should have been adopted for clerestory windows where those would have been more than ever unintelligible. Accordingly, in that position, the single figure treatment was adopted, and carried further than in the preceding century. The figure was now, not for the first time, but more invariably, enclosed in something like an architectural niche—a practice borrowed from the sculptor, who habitually protected the carvedfigures enriching the portals of great churches by a projecting canopy, giving them at the same time a pedestal or base of some kind to stand upon.
In glass there was clearly no occasion for such architectural shelter or support; but the pretended niche and base offered a means of occupying the whole length of the space within the border, which, without some additional ornament, would often have been too long in proportion to the figure, the mere band of inscription under its feet not being enough to fill out the length. These very rudimentary canopies, specimens of which are given here, are usually very insignificant. It takes sometimes an expert to realise that the broken colour about the head of the saint (page 46) stands for architecture. The forms, when you come to look at them closely, may be ugly as well as childish, but they go for so little that it seems hardly worth while to take exception to them. It is only as indication of a practice (later to be carried to absurd excess) of making shift with sham architecture for the ornamental setting necessary to bring the figure into relation and into proportion with the window it is to occupy, that the device of thus enshrining a figure as yet deserves attention. As the beginning of canopy work in glass it marks a very eventful departure in design. All that need here be said about the Early Gothic canopy is that it would have been easy to have devised decorative forms at once more frankly ornamental, more interesting in themselves, and more beautiful, not to say less suggestive of a child’s building with a box of bricks.