Lyons.84.Lyons.
Sometimes, as at Chartres and elsewhere, the base of the canopy would itself take the form of a little subordinateniche enclosing a figure in small of the Donor, or perhaps only of his shield of arms. Sometimes it would take the form of a panel of inscription, boldly leaded in yellow letters upon blue or ruby.
An alternative idea was to represent the Saints, or other holy personages, sitting. The figure onpage 135belongs actually to the beginning of the fourteenth century; but, except for a slightly more naturalistic character in the drawing of the drapery, it might almost have belonged to the same period as the standing figure onpage 46. In longer lights two saints are often figured, sitting one above the other. This may be seen in the clerestory at Canterbury; but the effect is usually less satisfactory than that of the single figure on a larger scale. The standing position is also much better suited to the foreshortened view which one necessarily gets of clerestory windows. A curious variation upon the ordinary theme occurs in four of the huge lancets in the south transept at Chartres, where the Major Prophets are represented each bearing on his shoulders an Evangelist. The same idea recurs at Notre Dame, Paris, under the south rose. That is all very well in idea—iconographically it is only right that the Old Testament should uphold the New—but reduced to picture it is absurd, especially as the Evangelists are drawn to a smaller scale than the Prophets, and irresistibly suggest boys having a ride upon their fathers’ shoulders. Dignity of effect there can be none. Not now for the first time, seemingly, is art sacrificed to what we call the literary idea.
It shakes one’s faith somewhat in the sincerity of the early mediæval artist to find that in the serried ranks of Kings, Prophets, Bishops, and other holy men, keeping guard over the church in the clerestory lights, one figure often does duty for a variety of personages, the colour only, and perhaps the face, being changed. At Reims there are as many as six in a row, all precisely of the same pattern, though the fraud may not be detected until one examines them from the triforium gallery. At Lyons, again, it looks as if the same thing occurred; but one cannot get near enough to them to be quite certain. None the less they are fine in colour. Thirteenth century glass was capable of great things in the way of colour; and the rows of Kings and Prophets looking down upon you from the clerestory of a great church like Bourges, archaic though the drawing be, are truly solemn and imposing.
S. Serge, Angers.85.S. Serge, Angers.
S. Serge, Angers.86.S. Serge, Angers.
With grisaille glass begins a new chapter in the history of glass painting, and a most important one—not only because of the beautiful work which was done from the first in white, but also because coloured glass grew, so to speak, always towards the light.
S. Jean-aux-Bois.87.S. Jean-aux-Bois.
The first coloured windows were intense in colour, rich, and even heavy. The note they struck was deep, solemn, suited to the church and to the times. Neither priest nor parishioner was afraid to sacrifice a certain amount of light. It was the business of a window to shut in those that worshipped from the outer world, and wrap them in mysterious and beautiful gloom. With other days, however, came other ideals. As time went on, and men emerged from the dark ages, the problem of the glazier was how more and more to lighten his glass; until at last white glass predominated, and the question was how to introduce colour into it. Meanwhile the thirteenth century glaziers resorted, where they wanted light, to the use of windows in grisaille, in absolute contrast to the rich picture-glass in the same church.
The model for grisaille design was readily found in the earlier pattern work in plain glazing.
>S. Jean-aux-Bois.88.S. Jean-aux-Bois.
This last never quite went out of use. But already in the thirteenth century, and probably in the twelfth, it began to be supplemented, for the most part, by painting. The exceptionally graceful work at S. Serge, Angers, for example, on this page and the last, is probably not very much later than the year 1200. You can see at a glance how this is only a carrying further of the unpainted work in the same church (page 27) attributed to the thirteenth century. There may be found indeed amidst the plain glazing scraps of painted work; but they never happen to fit, and have pretty certainly found their way into the window in course of repairs. The unpainted window seems to be of greener and more silvery glass than the painted, to which perhaps the cross-hatching gives a rather horny look.
Soissons.89.Soissons.
The one way of painting grisaille in the thirteenth century was to trace the design (which of course followed the traditional lines) boldly upon the white glass, and then to cross-hatch the ground, more or less delicately according to the scale of the work and its distance from the eye, as here shown. By this means the pattern was made to stand out clear and light against the background, which had now the value of a tint, only a much more brilliant one than could have been got by a film or wash of colour. Very occasionally a feature, such as the group of four crowns which form the centre of the circle,above, might be emphasised by filling in the ground about them in solid pigment; but that was never done to any large extent. The rule was always to cross-hatch the ground.
Early Detail.90.Early Detail.
With the introduction of colour into grisaille comes always the question as to how much or how little of it there shall be. There is a good deal of Early French work, which, on the face of it, was designed first as a sort of strapwork of interlacing bands in plain glazing, and then further enriched with painted work, not growing from it, except by way of exception. This is seen in the example here given. The painter indulged in slight modifications of detail as he went on. He had a model which he copied more or less throughout the window; but he allowed himself the liberty of playing variations, and he even departed from it at times. By this means headapted himself to the glass, which did not always take just the same lines, and at the same time he amused himself, and us, more than if he had multiplied one pattern with monotonous precision. His painting was strong enough to keep the leads in countenance; that is to say, his main outlines would be as thick (seeopposite) as lead lines.
Soissons.91.Soissons.
Reims.92.Reims.
Lincoln.93.Lincoln.
Patterns such as those onpages 138,139, andbelow, from Soissons, Reims, S. Jean-aux-Bois, would make good glazed windows apart from the painting on them. Indeed, the painting is there comparatively insignificant in design. In the Soissons work, in particular, it consists of little more than cross-hatching upon the background, to throw up the interlacing of the glazed bands; for, with the exception of just a touch of colour in the one opposite, these designs are executed entirely in white glass. The geometric glazing shapes so completely convey the design, that the painted detail might almost be an after-thought.
Water Perry, Oxon94.Water Perry, Oxon.
In much of the earliest grisaille there is absolutely no colour but the greenish hue belonging to what we are agreed to call white glass, and the effect of it is invariably so satisfactory as to show that colour is by no means indispensable. And, at all events in France, the colour was at first verysparingly used, except in those twelfth century patterns (pages 35,118,120) which cannot fairly be called grisaille. In the window onpage 137the colour is, practically speaking, enclosed in small spaces ingeniously contrived between the interlacing bands of white; in that onpage 138it is introduced in half rings, which form part of the marginal line, and in spots or jewels; but in either case there is little of it, and it is most judiciously introduced. The interlacing of bands of plain white upon a ground of cross-hatching, itself enriched with scrollwork clear upon it, is characteristically French. Similar bands of white occur, though not interlacing, in the comparatively clumsy panel from Lincoln (above), but the more usual English way was to make the bands of white broader, and to paint a pattern upon them, as in the lancet from Water Perry, Oxfordshire (opposite), or in the much more satisfactory light from Lincoln (overleaf), leaving only a margin of clear glass next the cross-hatched background. A similar kind of thing occurs in the churchof S. Pierre at Chartres (below). A yet more usual plan with us was to make the strapwork in colour, as at Salisbury. In the patterns on this page the straps do not interlace. In that onpage 143they not only interlace one with the other, but the painted ornament, which now takes the form of more elaborate scrollwork than heretofore, is intertwined with them. This is an extremely good example of Early English grisaille. Altogether Salisbury Cathedral is rich in white glass windows of this period (pages 143,148,329,332).
Lincoln95.Lincoln.
S. Pierre, Chartres96.S. Pierre, Chartres.
The grisaille in the clerestory at Bourges is similar to the Salisbury work, but it is not possible to get near enough to it to make careful comparison. The scrollwork onpage 143may be profitably compared with the very unusual white window at S. Jean-aux-Bois (overleaf). There the design consists altogether of scrolls in white upon a cross-hatched ground. It is as if the designer had set out to glaze up a pattern in white upon a white ground, cross-hatched. But it is obvious that, as there isno change of colour, it was no longer necessary always to cut the ornament out of a separate piece of glass from the ground. We find consequently that, wherever it is convenient, a painted line is used to save leading. That, it has been already explained (page 24), was a practice from the first; and it was resorted to more and more. It came in very conveniently in the French windows, in which the design consisted largely of white strapwork. It was adopted in the example from Châlonshere given, though it does not appear in the sketch, any more than it does in the glass until you examine it very carefully. However, in the sketches from the great clerestory window from Reims Cathedral (overleaf), and in the smaller one from S. Jean-aux-Bois (facing it), the economy of glazing is easy to perceive; whilst in that from Coutances (page 147) the glazier is already so sparing of his leads that they no longer always follow or define the main lines of the pattern.
Grisaille, Salisbury Cathedral
97. GRISAILLE, SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.J. Akerman, Photo-lith, London.
Châlons.98.Châlons.
In a remarkable window in the choir of Chartres Cathedral (page 150) the design includes interlacing bands both of white and colour, the coloured ones flanked with strips of white; but the white bands are not glazed separately. They are throughout included in the same piece of glass as the cross-hatching, which defines them. This ingenious and very graceful pattern window is still of the thirteenth century, though clearly of much later date than, for example, the windows of S. Jean-aux-Bois, which might indeed almost belong to the twelfth.
Clerestory, Reims.99.Clerestory, Reims.
In several of the Salisbury windows (pages 148,386) thin straps of colour are bounded on the outer side by broader bands of white painted with pattern. And here it should be noticed the bands no longer interlace at all; on the contrary, the ornamental forms are superposed one upon the other. This is very markedly the case onpage 148. In the centre of the light is a series of circular discs, and at the sides of these a row ofzigzags, which, as it were, disappear behind them, whilst at the edges of the window, again, is an array of segments of smaller circles losing themselves behind these. In such cases, it will be seen, the broad white bands fulfil the very useful purpose of keeping the coloured lines apart, and separating one series of shapes from the other. In this window, as in the narrow light onpage 386, where the vesica shape is occupied once more with flowing scrollwork, and as in all but one of the windows on that page, the background of cross-hatching is for the first time omitted, and the pencilled pattern is by so much the less effective. As a rule, patterns traced in mere outline like this belong to a later date; but these windows are certainly of the thirteenth century. It is seldom safe to say that this or that practice belonged exclusively to any one period. The white glass onpage 335, almost entirely without paint, might have been executed in the twelfth century, but its border indicates more likely the latter part of the thirteenth.Quite the simplest form of glazing was to lead the glass together in squares or diamonds. These “quarries,” as they are called (from the Frenchcarré) are associated sometimes with rosettes and bands of other pattern work, as at Lincoln (pages 284,287); but more ordinarily the ornamental part of the window is made up entirely of them. “Quarry” is a term to be remembered. It plays in the next century an important part in the design of windows.
S. Jean-aux-Bois.
100.S. Jean-aux-Bois.
Coutances.101.Coutances.
The best-known grisaille windows in England are the famous group of long lancets, ending the north transept of York Minster, which are known by the name of the Five Sisters. You remember the legend about them. The “inimitable Boz” relates it at length in “Nicholas Nickleby”; but it is nonsense, all the same. The story tells how in the reign of Henry the Fourth five maiden ladies worked the designs in embroidery, and sent them abroad to be carried out in glass. But, as it happens, they belong to the latter part of the thirteenth century; they are unmistakably English work; and, what is more, no woman, maiden, wife, or widow, ever had,or could have had, a hand in their design. Their authorship is written on the face of them. Every line in their composition shows them to be the work of a strong man, and a practical glazier, who worked according to the traditions that had come down to him. A designer recognises in it a man who knew his trade, and knew it thoroughly. The notion that any glazier ever worked from an embroidered design is too absurd. As well might the needlewoman go to the glazier to design her stitchery. But such is the popular ignorance of workmanship, and of its intimate connection with design, that no doubt the vergers will go on repeating their apocryphal tale as long as vergers continue to fill the office of personal conductors.
Grisaille, Salisbury Cathedral
102. GRISAILLE, SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.J. Akerman, Photo-lith, London.
The Five Sisters are rather looser and freer in design than the Salisbury glass, and have broad borders of white. In detail they are certainly not superior to that, nor in general design, so far as one can make it out at all; but, from their very size and position, they produce a much more imposing effect. Whoever is not impressed by the Five Sisters is not likely ever to be moved by grisaille. They form one huge fivefold screen of silvery glass. The patterns are only with great difficulty to be deciphered. It is with these as with many others of the most fascinating windows in grisaille; the glass is corroded on the surface, black with the dirt and lichen of ages, cracked and crossed with leads introduced by the repairing glazier, until the design is about as intelligible as would be a conglomeration of huge spiders’ webs. But, for all that, nay, partly because of it, it is a thing of absolutebeauty, as beautiful as a spider’s web, beaded with dewdrops, glistening in the sun on a frosty winter’s morning. It is a dream of silvery light: who cares for details of design? But it is all this, because it was designed, because it was planned by a glazier for glazing, and has all that gives glass its charm.
Chartres Cathedral.
103.Chartres Cathedral.
Stained glass, like the men who design it, has always the defects of its qualities. It is the first business of those who work in it to see that it has at least the qualities of its defects.
The merry life of the medallion window was a short one. It reigned during the Early Gothic period supreme; but after the end of the thirteenth century it soon went quite out of fashion, and with it the practice of shaping the bars to suit the pattern of the window—a practice, it will have been noticed, not followed in grisaille windows, though it might very well have been.
With the change which came over the spirit of later thirteenth century architecture some new departure in the design of glass became inevitable. The windows spoken of till now were all single lights, broader or narrower, as the case might be, but each so far off from the other that it had to be complete in itself, and might just as well be designed with no more than general reference to its neighbours. But in time it began to be felt in France that the broad Norman window was too broad, and so they divided it into two by a central shaft, or mullion as it is called, of stone. In England equally it began to be felt that the long narrow lancet lights were too much in the nature of isolated piercings in the bare wall, and so the builder brought them closer and closer together, until they also were divided by narrow mullions.
Decorated Medallion Window104.Decorated Medallion Window, German.
In this way, and in answer especially to the growing demand for more light in churches, and consequently for more windows, it became the custom to group them. Eventually the window group resolved itself into a single window of several, sometimes of many, lights, divided only by narrow stone mullions. Or, to account for it in another way, windows of considerable size coming into vogue, it became necessary, for constructional no less than for artistic reasons, to subdivide them by mullions into two or more lights. The arched window head was broken up into smaller fancifully shaped “tracery” lights, as they are called; and so we arrive at the typical “Decorated” Gothic window.
Freiburg.105.Freiburg.
The height of these windows being naturally in proportion to their width, the separate lights into which they were dividedwere apt to be exceedingly long. To have treated them after the Early medallion manner, each with its broad border, would have been to draw attention to this, and even to exaggerate their length. The problem now to be solved in glass was, how best to counteract the effect of insecurity likely to result from the thinness of the upright lines of the stone and the narrowness of the openings between them. It is not meant to say that the medallion window expired without a spasm. For a while Decorated windows were treated very much after the fashion of the earlier medallion windows. The medallions were necessarily smaller, and usually long in proportion to their width, although they extended now to the edge of the stonework, the narrowish border to the lights passing, as it were, behind them. This is very amply illustrated in the windows in the choir clerestory at Tours. Occasionally there is no border but a line of white and colour, and the whole interval between the elongated hexagonal or octagonal panels is given up to mosaic diaper. The medallions naturally range themselves in horizontal order throughout the three or four lights of the window, giving just the indication of a horizontal line across them. By way of exception, the subject of the Last Supper extends through all three lights of the East window, the tablecloth forming a conspicuous band of light across it. This glass at Tours is deep and rich throughout, as intense sometimes as in earlier work, though warmer in colour, owing to the greater amount of yellow glass employed. That was not to last long.
It lingered longest in Germany. There is a curious two-light window in Cologne Cathedral, with queer rectangular medallions, of considerable interest, which is probably not very early in date. A not very common type of Decorated medallion window is illustratedabove. The cutting across the border by medallion or other subjects, is a common thing infourteenth century glass (belowandopposite), just because such encroachment is obviously a most useful device in dealing with narrow spaces. It occurs in some medallion windows (also of the fourteenth century) at the church of Santa Croce, at Florence.
Details of Dec. German Glass
106. DETAILS OF DEC. GERMAN GLASS.
But this was not enough. The Germans went a step further, and carried the medallions boldly across two lights, treating them as a single medallion window with a stone mullion instead of an iron bar up the centre. There is an instance of this at S. Sebald’s Church, Nuremberg, and another, more curious than beautiful to see, at Strassburg. They went further still, and carried the medallions across a three-light window. There is one such at Augsburg, where the medallions almost fill the window, extending to the extreme edge of the outer lights. Indeed, a broad outer border of angels surrounding the great circles is cut short by the side walls. This is at least a means of getting rid of the littleness resulting sometimes from the small medallion treatment, and it is in fact most effective. The broad, sweeping, circular lines also have the appearance of holding the lights together and strengthening them.
Typical Decorated Canopy.107.Typical Decorated Canopy.
This was a thing most needful to be done in Decorated glass. It was needed sometimes already in Early work. At Clermont-Ferrand the narrow lancets at the end of the South transept are filled, except for a thin white beaded border, with diaper work in rich colour, interrupted at intervals by big rosettes of white, which form two bands of light across the series, and make them seem one group.
The deliberate use of horizontal lines (or features giving such lines) in glass, was clearly the most effective way of counteracting the too upright tendency of the masonry, or rather of preventing it from appearing unduly drawn out; and it became the custom. Even in a comparatively small Decorated window, for example, the figures would usually form a band across it, distinguished from the ornamental shrineworkabove and below it by a marked difference in colour. In a taller window there would be two, or possibly three, such bands of figures, in marked contrast to their framing. In Germany very often one big frame would cross the window, or the figure subjects would be separated—as at Strassburg, for example—by bands of arcading, out of which peeped little saints each with a descriptive label in his hand.
S. Urbain, Troyes.108.S. Urbain, Troyes.
A typical English canopy of the period is given onthis page. It was commonly enclosed, as here shown, within a border, wide enough to be some sort of acknowledgment of the subdivision of the window, but not wide enough to prevent the colour of the canopy from forming a distinct band across the window. The predominance of a powerful, rather brassy, yellow in the canopy work, and a contrast in colour between its background and that of the figures, carried the eye without fail across the window. A notable exception to the usual brassiness of the Decorated canopy occurs at Toulouse, where a number of high-pitched gables of the ordinary design, stronger in colour than usual, have crockets and finials of a fresh bright green.
New College, Oxford109.New College, Oxford.
The Decorated canopy, with its high-pitched gable and tallflying buttresses, its hard lines, and its brassy colour was a characteristic, but never a very beautiful feature in design; and it grew to quite absurd proportions. It was in Germany that it was carried to greatest excess, extending to a height three or four times that of the figure and more; but with us also it was commonly tall enough altogether to dwarf the poor little figure it pretended to protect. Even when it was not preposterously tall, its detail was usually out of all proportion to the figure. Your fourteenth century draughtsman would have no hesitation in making the finial of his canopy bigger than the head (nimbus and all) of the saint under it. Clumsiness of this kind is so much the rule, and disproportion is so characteristic of the middle of the fourteenth century, that, but for some distinctly good ornamental glass of the period, one might dismiss it as merely transitional, and not worthy of a chapter to itself in the history of glass design.
Executioner of S. John the Baptist110.Executioner of S. John the Baptist, 14th Century.
Our distinctions of style, as was said, are at the best arbitrary. We may devise a classification which shall serve to distinguish one marked type from another, but it is quite impossible to draw any hard-and-fast line between the later examples of one kind and the earlier of another one. We may choose to divide Gothic art into three classes, as we maysubdivide the spectrum into so many positive colours, but the indeterminate shades by which they gradate each into the other defy classification or description.
Certainly the best figure work of the middle period is that which might quite fairly be claimed as belonging, on the one hand, to the end of the Early, or on the other to the beginning of the Late, Gothic period. In the figures from Troyes, for example (page 47andopposite), the Early tradition lingers; in those from New College (alsoopposite) the characteristics of Late work begin to appear. In the figure of the headsman on this page there is certainly no sense of proportion. In all the wealth of Decorated figure-and-canopy work at York Minster there is nothing to rank for a moment with the best Early or Perpendicular glass. Nor in France, though there is Decorated work in most of the great churches, is there anything conspicuously fine. Even at S. Ouen, at Rouen, there is nothing particularly worthy of note. It is true that the period of the English occupation and the troubles which followed it was not the time when we should expect the arts to flourish there.
Decorated Borders.
111.Decorated Borders.
A most characteristic thing in glass of this intermediate period was the way in which colour and grisaille were associated. It has been already told how, before then, white and colour had been used together in the same light—at Auxerre, for example, where, within a broad border of colour, you find an inner frame of grisaille, enclosing a central figure panel of colour. Quite at the beginning of the fourteenth century, if not already at the end of the thirteenth, you find, as at S. Radegonde, Poitiers, upon a ground of grisaille, coloured medallion subjects, or more happily still, little figures, as it were,inlaid, breaking the white surface very pleasantly with patches of unevenly but judiciously dispersed colour—the whole enclosed in a coloured border. But in the fourteenth century the more even combination of white and colour was quite a common thing. Naturally it was introduced in the form of the horizontal bands already mentioned. And indeed it is in windows into which grisaille enters that this band-wise distribution of design is most apparent, and most typical. The designer very commonly conceived his window as in grisaille, crossed by a band or bands of colour, binding the lights together. That may be seen in the chapter-house at York, where you have several series of little subjects, more or less in the shape of medallions, forming so many belts of colour across the five-light grisaille windows, which belts the eye insensibly follows right round the building.
That is the theory of design. Its practical construction may be better described otherwise. The iron horizontal bars, to the use of which the glaziers had by this time come back, divide the lights each into a series of panels, which panels are filled at York alternately with coloured subjects and ornamental grisaille. Elsewhere perhaps two panels are filled with colourto one of grisaille, or three to one, orvice versâ. In any case these alternate panels of white and colour, occurring always on the same level throughout the lights composing the window (and often through all the windows along the aisle of a church), range themselves in pronounced horizontal strips or bands.
Grisaille and Figure.
112. GRISAILLE AND FIGURE.
This acceptance of the bars as a starting-point in design, and this deliberate counterchange of light and dark, may appear to indicate a very rough-and-ready scheme of design. But any brutality there might be in it is done away with by the introduction of a sufficient amount of white into the coloured bands and of a certain modicum of colour in the bands of white. And that was habitually the plan adopted. Into the subjects it was easy to introduce just as much white as seemed necessary. A little white might be there already in the flesh, which was no longer always represented in flesh-coloured glass but more and more commonly in white. The usual border at the sides of the grisaille—now reduced to quite modest proportions—perhaps a simple leaf border, as onpages 44,158, perhaps a still simpler “block” border, asabove, served to frame the white, at the same time that it was an acknowledgment once more of the fact that each light forms a separate division of the window. In most cases the introduction of a little colour into the grisaille panel, very often in the form of a rosette, went further to prevent any possible appearance of disconnection between the figures and their ornamental setting. As a matter of fact, so little obvious is the plan of such windows in the actual glass that it often takes one some time to perceive it.
Evreux.113.Evreux.
In the nave at York Minster the grisaille is crossed by two bands of coloured figure work. Elsewhere it is crossed by one; but where the figures have canopies, as they often have, thatmakes again a horizontal subdivision in the coloured portion of the glass. Sometimes the topmost pinnacles of the coloured canopies will extend into the grisaille above, breaking the harshness of the dividing line; but it is seldom that it appears harsh in the glass. The fact seems to be that the upward tendency of the long lights is so marked, and the mullions make such a break in any cross line, that there is no fear of horizontal forms pronouncing themselves too strongly; the difficulty is rather to make them marked enough. Architects came eventually to feel the want of some more sternly horizontal feature than the glazier could contrive, when they introduced the stone transom, which was a feature of the later Gothic period.
When it was a question of glazing a broad single light of earlier construction, the fourteenth century artist designed his glass accordingly. Not that he then adopted the thirteenth century manner—it never entered his mind to work in any other style than that which was current in his day; the affectation of bygone styles is a comparatively modern heresy—but he adapted his design equally to help, if not to correct, the shape of the window opening. Accustomed as he was to narrower lights, the broad window of an earlier age appeared to him unduly broad, and his first thought was to make it look narrower. This he did by dividing it into vertical (instead of horizontal) strips of white and colour. That is shown in the window from Troyes (page 159), in which the centre strip of the window, occupied by figures and canopies in colour, is flanked by broad strips of grisaille, and that again by a coloured border. There, as usual, you find some white in the figure work and some colour in the grisaille, always the surest way of making the window look one.
The judicious treatment of a belated lancet window like this goes to show that it was of set purpose that the tall lights of a Decorated window were bound together by ties of coloured glass. So long as windows were built in many lights, that plan of holding them together was never abandoned. There is a very notable instance of this at Berne, where the four long lights of a Late Gothic window are crossed by lines of canopy work, taking not horizontal but arched lines (a device common enough in German glass), effectually counteracting the lean and lanky look of the window. Still markedly horizontal lines of subdivision in glass design are more characteristic of the second Gothic period than of any other.
Towards the fourteenth century, it seems, a wave of realism swept over Gothic art. So much is this so that a relatively speaking naturalistic form of ornamental detail is the most marked feature of the Decorated period, giving it its name, and, indeed, its claim to be a style.
Norbury, Derbyshire.114.Norbury, Derbyshire.
S. Pierre, Chartres.115.S. Pierre, Chartres.
No great stress has been laid in the foregoing chapters upon this new departure in naturalism, because it did not so very vitally affect design. When it is said that glass followed always the fashion of architecture, that is as much as to say that, as the sculptors took to natural instead of conventional foliage, so did the glass painters; and there is not much more to tell. To trace the development of naturalistic design would lead us far astray. Enough to say that, by the naturalistic turn of its ornamental foliage you may recognise the period called “Decorated.” How far that naturalism of Decorated detail may be to the good is aquestion there is no need here to dispute. It was a new departure. The new work lacked something of the simple dignity and self-restraint which marked the earlier, and it had not yet the style and character which came in the next century of more consistently workmanlike treatment. In so far it was a kind of prelude to Perpendicular work. This is not to deny that excellent work was done in the Decorated period, especially perhaps in glass, where naturalism, at its crudest, is less offensive than in wood or stone. But there is no getting over the fact that the period was intermediate; and Decorated glass is in a state of transition (1) between the archaism of the early and the accomplishment of the later Gothic; (2) between the conventional ornament which merely suggests nature and natural foliage conventionally treated; (3) between strong rich colour and delicate silvery glass. The transition of style is nowhere more plainly to be traced than in the grisaille of the period. At first the character of fourteenth century grisaille did not greatly differ from earlier work, except in the form of the painted detail. That from S. Urbain, Troyes, onpage 333, is a typical instance of Early French Transition foliage, in which the scroll is only less strong and vigorous than before. Precisely the same kind of detail is shown again in the lower of the two instances, likewise from Troyes,opposite; but already natural leaves begin to mingle with it; whilst in the illustration above it, though the mosaic border is characteristically early, the foliage in grisaille is deliberately naturalistic. The grisaille at Troyes, by the way, often reminds one of that at York Minster. It is mainly by the naturalistic character of the ivy scroll, or perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say of the leaves upon it, that the design from Norbury, Derbyshire (page 162), betrays its later date, by that and the absence of cross-hatching on thebackground. The glazing of the window is still thoroughly mosaic.