York Minster.146.York Minster.
The enormous East window at York Minster, which belongs to the very early years of the fifteenth century, contains, apart from its tracery, no less than a hundred and seventeen subjects in its twenty-seven lights; but the canopies dividing them are so narrow that they scarcely answer the purpose of frames to the separate subjects. The design is inextricably confused, and the subjects are very difficult to read; but the effect is still as of a mass of jewels caught in a network of white. In fact, the progress towards light is such that, whereas in the last century the problem was how to get more and more white glass into a coloured window, it seems now more often to be how to get colour into a white one.
Cologne Cathedral.147.Cologne Cathedral.
White and stain enter so largely into Late Gothic glass that there remains little to be said about grisaille. The glass of the period is, for the most part, in grisaille and colour, the difference between it and earlier grisaille being, that it consists so largely of figure-and-canopy work. Windows, however, do occur all in white or all in white and stain. Figures, for example, in white and stain, occur, as in the South transept at York, on a ground of delicately painted quarries. Again, a common arrangement is that of figures in white and colour against a background of quarry work, a band of inscription separating the pavement upon which they stand from quarries below them. Such figures form a belt across many moderate-sized windows in parish churches. Mere quarry lights also occur, with a border in which perhaps some colour occurs. But the subject of quarries and quarry windows is reserved for consideration in achapterby itself.
It must not be supposed that the drift of Later Gothic in the direction of white glass was uninterrupted. That was by no means so. At certain places, and at certain periods, and especially by certain artists, there seems to have been a reaction against this tendency, if ever there was any yielding to it. For example, notwithstanding all that has been said about the lighter tone of Decorated glass, some of the very finest fourteenth century German work, at S. Sebald’s Church, Nuremberg, is as intensely and beautifully rich as anything in Early work. There rows of small subjects are framed in little canopies asdeep in colour as the pictures, and white glass is conspicuous by its absence. The nearest approach to it is an opaque-looking horn colour, and that is used only very sparingly. Possibly, however, it is not quite fair to call these windows rich, for the upper part of them is light. So light is it, and so little has it to do with the stained glass, that one scarcely accepts it as part of the window, and therefore speaks of it as if it ended with the colour.
The unfortunate plan has been adopted here, as in the cathedral at Munich and elsewhere in Germany, of filling only about half the window, from the sill upwards, with strong stained glass. This ends abruptly at an arbitrary and very unsatisfactory canopy arch, which, in a way, frames it; and above it the window is filled with plain white rounds. At Freiburg there is yet a further band of plain rounds next the sill of the windows. The object of this is, doubtless, to get light into the church; but the effect is as if the builders had run short of coloured glass, and had only finished off the window temporarily. As a means of combining white and colour this German shift is not, of course, to be compared to the plan current elsewhere of distributing them in alternating bands. It does not attempt to combine them, but cuts the window deliberately in two. Not until you have shaded off from your eyes the distracting rays of white light, can you properly appreciate or enjoy the coloured glass.
The Prodigal Son, Troyes
148. THE PRODIGAL SON, TROYES.
But, if these windows must be considered, as in a sense they must be, as conforming to the demand for more light, there are others in which strong colour is carried consistently through, not only in the fourteenth but in the fifteenth century. (It is irritating and annoying to have to hark back in this way to periods supposed to have been long since left behind, but any arbitrary line of division between the styles must, as it were, cut off points which project from one into the other, sometimes very far indeed across the boundary line; and hence the absolute necessity, at times, of seeming to retrace our steps, if we would really trace the progress of design.) There are shownoppositefour lights out of a large window in the clerestory of the cathedral at Troyes, in which the history of the Prodigal Son is pictured in little upright subjects, framed in canopies of quite modest proportions and of colour which in no wise keeps them separate from the richly coloured figuresunderneath. One of them, for example, is of green, very much the colour of an emerald, on an inky-purple ground. The result is a very rich window, full of quaintly dramatic interest when you come to examine it; but there are no broadly marked divisions of colour in the glass to affect the architecture of the building one way or the other, nor does it tell its tale very plainly. It is more easily read onpage 194than from the floor of the church.
In the windows so far discussed the figure subjects, however small and however close together, have always been marked off one from the other, slightly as it might be, at first by the marginal lines round the early subject medallions, and then by canopies. It is shown in another fifteenth century window from Troyes (opposite) how even that amount of framework was now sometimes abandoned.
Progress in glass design, it was said, was in the direction of light and of picture. Moved by the double impulse, the designer of the Later Gothic period framed his coloured pictures in white. But where he happened not to care so much about light, or had not to consider it, he omitted even the narrow shaft of white or colour (which, so long as he used a canopy, usually divided the picture from the stonework) and left it to the mullions to separate them vertically. Horizontally he divided them slightly by a band of ornament, as at Troyes, of about the width of the mullions, or more frequently, and more plainly, by lines of inscription on white or yellow bands. If the subjects were arranged across the window in tiers alternately on ruby and blue grounds, that, of course, separated each somewhat from the one next above and below it, but it banded those on the same level together. This helped the architectural effect, but confused the story-telling.
If the pictures were arranged, throughout the width as well as the length of the window, alternately in panels on red and blue grounds, that kept the pictures rather more apart, but made the distribution of the colour all-overish. That mere change of ground could not keep pictures effectively separate will be clear when it is seen (opposite) how little of the background extends to the mullion. The greater part of the figures come quite up to the stonework, and the subjects consequently run together. It is difficult to realise, except by experience, how little the stonework can be depended upon to frame stained glass. Itseems when you see it all upon paper that the mullions, with their strongly marked mouldings, must effectually frame the glass between them. They do nothing of the kind. They go for so much shadow: what you see is the glass. This the glass painters realised at length, and took to carrying their pictures across them. And it has to be confessed that so long as they schemed them cleverly the interference of the mullion was not much felt.
The Story Of Tobit
149. THE STORY OF TOBIT, TROYES.
The distinction drawn so far between “single figures” and “subjects” has answered its obvious purpose; but that also is, in a manner, arbitrary. Figures standing separately, each in a light by itself, form very often a series—such as the four Evangelists, the twelve Apostles, the Prophets, the Doctors of the Church, or a succession of kings, bishops, or other ecclesiastics. More than that, they form perhaps a group. When we discover that facing the figure of the Virgin Mary is that of the Angel Gabriel, we see at once that, though each figure occupies a separate light of the window, and each stands in its own separate niche, we have in reality here a subject extending through two lights—the Annunciation. So in a four-light window—if in one light stands the Virgin with the Infant Christ, and in the others a series of richly garbed figures with crowns and gifts in their hands, it is clear that this represents the Adoration of the Magi—a subject in four lights; and the canopies over them may be taken to be one canopy with four niches. A yet more familiar instance of continuity between the single figures in the lights of a window occurs where the central light contains the Christ upon the cross, and in the sidelights stand the Virgin and S. John. We have in such cases the beginning of the subject extending through several lights. It is only a short step from the Annunciation, or the Adoration, or the Crucifixion described, to the same subject, under one canopy, extending boldly across the window, with shafts only to frame the picture at its sides. That is what was done—especially in Germany. It occurs already in Early Decorated glass, where the upper part of a big geometric window is sometimes occupied by brassy pinnacle work, which asserts itself, perhaps, upon a ground of mosaic diaper, in the most unpleasant way. In the white glass of a later period the effect was happier.
At first the designer did not, as a rule, aspire to carry his subjects right across a big window. Accepting the transom asa natural division, he would perhaps divide a four-light window vertically into two, so as to get four subjects, each under a canopy extending across two lights; or, in a five-light window, he would probably separate these by other narrow subjects in the central lights. Divisions of this kind often occur already in the stonework of the window, the lights being architecturally divided by stronger mullions into groups. In that case all the glass painter does is to emphasise the grouping of the lights schemed by the architect. Where the architect has not provided for such grouping he does it, perhaps, for himself. It enables him to design his figures on a larger scale, and to get a much broader effect in his glass than he could do so long as he kept each picture rigorously within the limits of a single light. Consideration for his picture had probably more to do with his reticence than respect for its architectural framework; and so soon as ever he realised how little even a strong mullion would really interfere with his work, he made no scruple to take all the space he wanted for his purpose. Infinite variety of composition is the result. The upper half of the window is perhaps devoted to a single subject, or to two important pictures, whilst below the transom the lights are broken up into quite little pictures; or in place of these smaller pictures may be found little panels of heraldry, as occurs often in Flemish work. These or the smaller pictures may be continued in the sidelights of a broad window, flanking, and in a way framing, a large central picture. Sometimes, as in the nave of Cologne Cathedral, the upper half of the window may contain one imposing composition; below that may be a series of important single figures, each provided with its separate canopy; and below that again, at the base of the window, may be a series, or several series, of small heraldic panels.
Fairford.150.Fairford.
The canopy extending across a broad window (page 200) may be so schemed that there is obvious recognition of the lights into which it is divided, or it may sprawl across the window space with as little regard to intervening mullions as possible. There is now, in short, full scope for the fancy of the artist, were he never so fanciful; and it would be a hopeless task to try and catalogue the lines on which the design of a large window might now be set out.
We do not in the fifteenth century arrive yet at the most remarkable achievements in glass painting. But you have onlyto compare such pictures as those onpages 194,196, with that onpage 127to see what a complete revolution has come over the spirit of design. It is not only that the draughtsman has learnt to draw, and the painter to paint; they work on quite a different system. It was explained (page 44) how in early days the glazier conceived his design as mosaic, how he first thought it out in lead lines, and only relied on paint to help him out in details which glazing could not give him. Now, it is easy to see that the painter begins at the other end. He thinks out his picture as a painting, and relies upon glazing only for the colour which he cannot get without it.
In the beginning, it was said, the glazier might often have fixed his lead lines, and trusted to his ingenuity to fill them in with painted detail. Now, it would seem, the painter might almost have sketched his picture, and then bethought him how to glaze it. But that is not yet really so. He did not even conceive his design as a picture and then translate it into glass. His work runs so smoothly it cannot be translation. The ingenuity with which he leads up little bits of colour in the midst of white, is no mere feat of engineering; it is spontaneous. It is clear that he had the thought of glazing in his mind all along—that he designed for it, in fact. The difference between the thirteenth century and the fifteenth century designer is, that one thinks first of glazing, is primarily a glazier, the other thinks first of painting, is primarily a painter.
Renaissance Window
151. RENAISSANCE WINDOW, TROYES CATHEDRAL.
The customary line between Gothic and Renaissance glass is drawn at aboutA.D.1530. That is to say, that there are to be found examples, presumably of that date, which are still undoubtedly Gothic in character. But he would be a bold man, even for an archæologist, who dared to say precisely when the Gothic era came to an end.
Quite early in the sixteenth century the new Italian movement began to make itself felt in France, Germany, Flanders; in due course it spread to this country. Eventually it supplanted the older style; but it was only by degrees that it insinuated itself into the affections of cis-alpine craftsmen. And in stained glass, even more plainly than in wood or stone carving, is seen how gradually the new style was assimilated by the mediæval craftsmen—more quickly, of course, by the younger generation than the older—so that, concurrently with design in the quasi-Italian manner, Gothic work was still being done. Much of the earlier Renaissance work shows lingering Gothic influence. In the first quarter of the sixteenth century a great deal of glass was designed and executed by men hesitating between the old love and the new, only partially emancipated from mediæval tradition, or only imperfectly versed in the foreign style.
There is a window at S. Nizier, at Troyes, for example, in which the details are Renaissance, but the feeling is quite Gothic. The subjects are even explained by elaborate yellow scrolls or labels inscribed in black, very much after the manner of those which form such a feature in the German Gothic work at Shrewsbury (page 186). Renaissance forms are traced with a hand which betrays long training in the more rigid mediæval school; and Gothic and Italian details are put together in the same composition with anaïvetéwhich is sometimes quite charming.
You can see that the designer of the window onpage 203was not untouched by Renaissance influence. Possiblyhe thought the hybrid ornament in his canopy was quite up to date.
In the glass in the nave of Cologne Cathedral the suspicion aroused by the side columns of the otherwise quite Gothic canopy onpage 191is confirmed by definitely Renaissance forms in the ornament in the window head. Again, at the Church of S. Peter, at Cologne, is a sort of pointed canopy with ornament which looks at first like Gothic crockets, but on nearer view it is just Italian arabesque in white and stain. Apart from architectural accessories and detail of costume or ornament, to justify the attribution of the work to this or that period, it is very often difficult to give a name to early Renaissance work; the only safe refuge is in the convenient word transitional.
But for the nimbus in perspective, and the shield of arms and its little amorino supporter, it would have seemed safe to describe the “Charge to S. Peter” from S. Vincent at Rouen onpage 207as “Gothic.”
In French glass a lingering Gothic element is noticeable at a period when Italian forms had firmly established themselves in contemporary plastic art; but, then, glass painting was not an Italian art; and, whilst wood carvers and sculptors were imported from Italy, and directly influenced the Frenchmen working with them, glass painting remained in the hands of native artists.
Before very long the Renaissance did, of course, assert itself, in glass painting as in all art, and we arrive at windows absolutely different from anything that was done in the Middle Ages. The change was in some places much more rapid than in others. Wherever there was a strong man his influence would make for or against it. But meanwhile much intermediate work was done, belonging more or less to the new school, whilst retaining very much of the character of Gothic glass.
That Gothic character was something well worth keeping; for it is the character which belongs inherently to the material.
St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury.
152.St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury.
The Gothic glass painters did, in fact, so thoroughly develop the resources of the material, that a Renaissance window treated really like glass inevitably suggests the lingering of Gothic tradition. This is no slight praise of Gothic work; and, by implication, it tells against the later Renaissance glass painters, whose triumphs were in a direction somewhat apart from theircraft. The great windows at Brussels, for example (page 71), illustrate a new departure. They seem to have nothing in common with mediæval art. On the other hand, one traces the descent of such masterpieces of translucent glass painting as are to be found at Arezzo (page 397), through those same intermediate efforts, directly to Gothic sources.
To trace the steps by which the new encroached upon the old, as one may do, for example, at Rouen, is almost to come to the conclusion that the short but brilliant period of Renaissance glass painting is really the after-fruit of Gothic tradition, fertilised only by the great flood of Renaissance feeling which swept over sixteenth century art. Nowhere is thismore clearly argued than in the windows at Auch, completed, according to all accounts, as early as 1513. A strain of Gothic is betrayed by the cusping which here and there fringes a semicircular canopy arch; but no less mistakably mediæval is the technique throughout, and equally so the setting out of the windows. For the somewhat imposing canopies are not, for once, devised as frames to correspondingly important pictures; but are simply shrines adorned with figures each confined to its separate light: it is only the small subsidiary predella or other such pictures which extend beyond the mullions. No doubt there is doctrinal intention in the juxtaposition of Prophets, Sibyls, and the rest—one of whom may even be supposed to be addressing the other—but to all intents and purposes decorative, they are just a row of standing figures, as distinct one from the other as the usual series of figures under quite separate canopies. It is only the canopy which connects them. This kind of composition (which is seen again at Troyes,page 200) would never have occurred to a man altogether cut off from Gothic tradition.
Chapel of the Bourbons, Lyons.
153.Chapel of the Bourbons, Lyons.
It is worth remarking that, even when Gothic and Renaissance canopies alternate at Auch in a single window, or where Gothic niches are built, as it were, into or on to larger Renaissance structures, there is no appearance of incongruity. Truth to tell, the Gothic is not so purely Gothic, nor the Renaissance so purely Renaissance, as that they should clash one with the other. Both are seen through the temperament of the artist. He mixedthem in his mind; and the result is quite one,hisstyle in short.
S. Godard, Rouen.154.S. Godard, Rouen.
Early Renaissance glass submitted itself, one can hardly say duly, but almost as readily as late Gothic design, to the restraint of Gothic mullions. The windows in which, as it happens, some of the best Early French Renaissance work is found (and it is in France that the best is to be found) are often smaller than the great Perpendicular windows referred to, and do not lend themselves to such elaborate subdivision. But the lines on which they are subdivided are very much as heretofore. The canopy still extends through several lights, and covers a single subject. Only now it is Renaissance in design. That does not mean to say merely that round arched architecture takes the place of pointed. The round arch occurs indeed, as in the windows in the Chapel of the Bourbons, in Lyons Cathedral (onpages 204and349), supplemented by amorini and festoons of fruit. But more often the canopy takes the form of a frieze of Renaissance ornament, painted in white and stain, as at S. Godard, Rouen (opposite), or glazed in white on colour, as in the cathedral of the same city (pages 75,350), supported at each end by a pilaster. Not seldom it resolves itself into arabesque only very remotely connected with architecture at all. Indeed, if it simulate anything, it is goldsmith’s work rather than masonry. Executed, as at Rouen (pages 75,206), in brilliant yellow on a dark coloured ground, it has very much the appearance and value of beaten gold. That, rather than sculpture, must have been in the mind of the designer. One form of imitation is not much better than another; but here, at all events, there is nothing which in the least competes with the surrounding architecture; and it will scarcely be denied by any one who takes the least interest in ornament, that design of this kind is vastly more amusing than the dull array of misplaced pinnacles which often did duty for ornamental detail in Gothic shrinework. A German version of a canopy which ceases almost to be a canopy and becomes more like arabesque, is given onpage 350. That is supported by columns (the caps are shown in the illustration) rather out of keeping with the ornament they support, which makes very little pretence of being architectural. The canopies onpages 204,350, are supported only on little brackets at each side, and have no shafts at all. This marks a new departure. The picture has now no frame at its sides, only the stone mullion.
S. Patrice, Rouen.
155.S. Patrice, Rouen.
It was explained, in reference to glazing, what confusion of detail resulted from the use of leads of which some were intended to form part of the design and some not. Similar confusion is inevitable when certain of the mullions are meant to be accepted as frame to the picture and others to be ignored. The perhaps not very conspicuous canopy is often the only hint as to which of the stone divisions you are to accept as such, and which not. Even that was not always there to serve as a guide. Already,as early as 1525, the date given to the window illustrating the life of S. Peter (page 207), the canopy was sometimes annulled, and the window given over entirely to picture, either one complete subject or a series of smaller ones. The window dedicated to S. Peter contains in its four lights eight equal subjects, a plan adopted in several others of the windows at S. Vincent, Rouen. In a series of unframed subjects, such as these, there is much less danger of confusion should some one prominent figure recur throughout always in the same costume. That is the case here, and again at Châlons, where the figure of Our Lord, robed in purple, is conspicuous throughout: the mind grasps at a glance that this is not one picture but a series.
Subject, S. Vincent, Rouen, 1525.
156. SUBJECT, S. VINCENT, ROUEN, 1525.
A change of period is indicated by the departure from the disc-shaped nimbus. Onpages 207,210,234,397, the nimbus is shown in perspective; an attempt is even made to make it hover above the head, an effect not possible to produce in leaded glass; even at Arezzo it is not achieved. Neither is the use of a mere ring of light, whether in flat or in perspective, a happy substitution for the Gothic colour disc, as may be seen, for example, at Cologne. The idea of the nimbus only keeps within the border line which separates the sublime from the ridiculous, so long as the thing is frankly accepted as a symbol, not as an effect. But, were it otherwise, the use of the strongly marked disc of colour about the head of prominent personages has an enormous value as a means of distinguishing them from the background or from surrounding figures. Its decorative importance is no less than its symbolic. Very especially is this so in glass; and the glass painter who wantonly departs from its use, reduces it to a mere ring (which does not separate it at all from the background) or poises it in the air, is beginning to wander from the way, narrow if you please, which leads to success in glass. This is said with some reluctance in face of the all but perfect little panel from S. Bonnet, at Bourges, onpage 210. It is true that there the nimbus of the boy saint, though in perspective, does by its dark tone separate the head from the light ground, as the face is separated from the darker drapery of his teacher; and, in so far, little of definition is sacrificed; but, after all, admirably as the design is schemed, the oval nimbus is not a whit less conventional than the round disc of mediæval times, and it does lack something of distinction and dignity which that conveyed.The date inscribed (1544) serves to remind us that we are nearing the middle of the century, at which period glass painting may safely be said to have reached its zenith and to be nearing the verge of decline.
It will have been seen in the examples lately instanced how story is gradually more and more naturally set forth in glass. There is now no vestige of flat treatment left. Even the standing figure (page 191) stands forth from his niche, and though he may be backed by a curtain of damask, there is shown above that a background of receding architecture. So in the S. Bernard windows at Shrewsbury (pages 56,203) there is architectural distance shown in perspective, and again in the subjects from Fairford, whether it be the portcullised gate of Jerusalem that is represented (page 251), or the very inadequate palace of King Solomon (page 188), or the Garden of Eden, in which the scene of the Temptation is primitively pourtrayed (page 372), there is some attempt to render the scene. Even in the fifteenth century work at Troyes (page 194) the Prodigal is not merely shown among the swine, joining them in a dinner of gigantic acorns, but he leans against an oak tree, and in the distance is a little forest of trees. In Renaissance glass the scene is much more naturally rendered, and forms almost invariably an important part of the composition. Witness the palace of Herod (page 74) when Salome dances before him, which is a great advance upon the Gothic throne-room of King Solomon (page 188).
Subject, S. Bonnet, Bourges.
157. SUBJECT, S. BONNET, BOURGES.
The scene takes one of three forms: either it is architectural, or it is landscape, or it is of architecture and landscape combined. A very favourite plan of the French was to show distant architecture (glazed in deep purple) through which were seen glimpses of grey sky, and perhaps a peep of landscape; and it resulted invariably in a beautiful effect of colour. In fact, a scheme of colour which recurs again and again at Rouen, and in other French glass of the first part of the sixteenth century, consists in the introduction of figures in rich colour and white upon a background where white, green, purple, and pale blue predominate to such an extent as to give quite a distinctive character to the glass. The more distant landscape was painted very delicately upon the pale grey-blue glass which served for sky, as shown onpage 255, and in the same way architecture was also painted upon it. In the view throughthe arches above the screen in a window at Montmorency (page 213), both trees and buildings are represented in that way upon pale grey glass, the green of the trees and hills stained upon it. Sometimes the distance is painted upon white, as at King’s College, Cambridge; but in France the pale grey-blue background is so usual as to be quite characteristic of the period. All this is a long way from the mere diaper of clouds which in the early fifteenth century sometimes took the place of damask pattern upon the blue which formed a background to the Crucifixion, or other scene out of doors. It is now no longer a case of symbolising, but of representing, the sky, and it is wonderful what atmospheric quality is obtained by the judicious use of pale blue painted with the requisite delicacy. The beauty of this kind of work, especially on a small scale, is beyond dispute. Together with the rendering of the flesh, it implies consummate skill in painting. The painter comes quite to the front; but he justifies himself inasmuch as he is able to hold the place. He does what his Gothic predecessors could not have done, and does it perfectly. Could the Gothic artist have painted like this, he also might have been tempted so far in the pictorial direction as to have sacrificed some of the sterner qualities of his design.
The architectural environment of the figures onpage 213fulfils somewhat the function of the Perpendicular canopy; it forms a kind of setting of white for the colour; but, in the first place, it does not pretend to frame them at the side, and, in the second, the attempt at actual perspective necessitates an amount of shading upon the white glass which detracts at once from its purity and from its value as setting to the colour. The idea is there that you see through the window into space; and, though that effect is never obtained, it is wonderful how far some of the glass painters later in the century went towards illusion. A certain false air of truth was sometimes given to the would-be deception by an acknowledgment of the window-shape—that is, by making the foremost arch or arches follow the shape of the window head, and form, as it were, a canopy losing itself in perspective. Architecture proper to the subject, or not too inappropriate to it, is sometimes schemed so far to accommodate itself to the window-shape as to form, with the white pavement, a more or less canopy-like setting for the figures. It may be a sort of proscenium, the sides of whichrecede into the picture, and form what may be called the scenery. At King’s College, Cambridge, Esau is seen bargaining away his birthright at a table where stands the coveted pottage, in the midst of spacious halls going back into distant vistas, seen through a sort of canopy next the actual stonework. That concession to the framework of the window does mend matters somewhat. The base of the pictureopposite, for example, is much more satisfactory than it would have been had it not acknowledged the window-sill; but the architecture in the top part of the lights is not a frame to the picture at all, nor yet a finish to the glass: it is part of the picture, which thus, you may say, occupies the window as a picture its canvas. In reality that is not quite so. There is some acknowledgment, though inadequate, of the spring of the arch by a horizontal cornice parallel with the bar; and the arcading, though interrupted by the mullion and by the marble columns, steadies the design; and altogether the architecture is planned with ingenuity, though without frank enough acceptance of the window-shape. One would be more tolerant to such misguided freedom of design were it not for the kind of thing it led to. It must be admitted that both French and Flemings, until they began to force their perspective, and to paint shadow heavily, did very beautiful and effective work in this way.
A multitude of figures, as, for example, in the Judgment of Solomon at S. Gervais, Paris, more or less in rich colour, could be held together by distant architecture and foreground pavement largely consisting of white glass, in a way which left little to be desired, except fuller acknowledgment of the stonework. But it took a master of design to do it, and one with a fine sense of breadth and architectural fitness.
When such architecture was kept so light as to have the full value of white, and when the figures against it were also to a large extent in white, and the colour was introduced only in little patches and jewels skilfully designed to form, here the sleeves of a white-robed figure, there a headdress, there again the glimpse of an underskirt, and so on—all ingeniously designed for the express purpose of introducing rich colour, the whole shot through with golden stain—the effect is sometimes very beautiful.
Saints, Ch. of S. Martin
158. SAINTS, CH. OF S. MARTIN, MONTMORENCY.
Admirable Flemish work, Renaissance in detail, but carrying on the traditions of Gothic art, is to be found in plenty atLiège, both in the cathedral (1530 to 1557) and at S. Martin. This is excellent in drawing and composition, most highly finished in painting, fine in colour, and silvery as to its white glass, which last is splendidly stained. In the same city there is beautiful work also at S. Jacques, with admirable treatment of the canopy on a large scale. It differs from French work inasmuch as it is Flemish, just as the glass at the church of Brou differs in that there is a characteristic Burgundian flavour about it; but those are details of locality, which do not especially affect the course of glass painting, and which it would be out of place here to discuss.
In England we are not rich in Renaissance glass. The best we have is Flemish, from Herkenrode, now in the cathedral at Lichfield. The greater part of this is collected in seven windows of the Lady Chapel—no need to explain which; the miserable shields of arms in the remaining two convict themselves of modernity. In the tracery, too, there is some old glass, but it is lost in the glare of new glazing adjacent. Otherwise this glass is not much hurt by restoration. Four of the windows are treated much alike; that is, they have each three subjects, extending each across the three lights of which they are composed, some with enclosing canopy, and some without. A fifth three-light window is broken up into six tiers of subjects, each of which appears at first sight as if it were confined to the limits of a single light, but there is in fact connection between the figures; for example, of three figures the central one proves to be the Patron Saint of the Donor, himself occupying one of the sidelights, and his wife the other. If the Saint is seated the Donors stand. If he is represented standing they kneel before him. The two larger six-light windows at Lichfield are divided each into four; that is to say, the four quarters of the window have each a separate subject which extends laterally through three lights, and in depth occupies with its canopy about half the entire height of the window.
The Lichfield glass has very much the character of that at Liège. So has the Flemish glass now at the east end of S. George’s, Hanover Square, a church famous for its fashionable weddings. This is some of the best glass in London, well worthy the attention of the guests pending the arrival of the bride. The design, however, is calculated to mystify thestudent, until he becomes aware that the lights form part of a “Tree of Jesse,” adapted, not very intelligently, to their present position, and marred by hideous restoration, such as the patch of excruciating blue in the robe of the Virgin. The vine, executed in stain upon white, with grapes in pot-metal purples, is not nearly strong enough to support the figures; this may be in part due to the decay of the paint, which has proceeded apace.
Again, at Chantilly (page 218) may be seen how lead lines quarrel with delicate painting. The more delicate the painting, the greater the danger of that—a danger seldom altogether overcome.
S. George’s, Hanover Square
159. S. GEORGE’S, HANOVER SQUARE, LONDON.
The most important series of Renaissance windows in this country is in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. “Indentures” still remain to tell us that these were contracted for in 1516 and 1526. Apart from some strikingly English-looking figures in white and stain upon quarry backgrounds in a side chapel, and other remains of similar character, and from a very beautiful window almost opposite the door by which one enters—differing in type, in scale, in colour, altogether from the other windows—the glass throughout the huge chapel was obviously planned at the time of the first contract, and there is a certain symmetry of arrangement throughout which bespeaks the period of transition. The windows consist each of two tiers of five lights. A five-light window offers some difficulty to the designer if he desire (as in the sixteenth century he naturally did) to introduce subjects extending across more than one light. A subject in two lights does not symmetrically balance with a subject in three. He might carry his subject right across the window, but that might give him very likely a larger space to fill than he wanted; and besides, the time was hardly come for him to think of that. He might carry it across the central group of three; but that would leave him a single light on each side to dispose of. Remains the idea of a subject in two lights at each side of the window, and a central composition occupying only one light. That was not a very usual plan, although it was adopted, at Fairford for example, where the side subjects in two lights under a canopy are effectually separated by a central subject which has none. At King’s the sidelights have no canopies further than such as may be accepted as part of the architecture proper to the subject,schemed more or less to frame the picture (as in the case of the window at Montmorency,page 213); it is only in the centre lights that the figures (two in each light, one above the other) are enclosed in canopy work. These figures (described as “messengers”), with elaborately flowing scrolls about them inscribed with texts of Scripture, are many of them quite Gothic in character, even though they have Renaissance canopies over them. The designs of these mostly do duty many times over, as if this merely decorative or descriptive work were not of much account; and the same figure occurs, here well painted, there ill done, or painted perhaps in a late, loose way, quite out of keeping with the drawing: there is no sort of sequence in them. The notion of these intermediate figures, at once distinguishing the subjects one from the other, and throwing light upon their meaning, is good. But in effect it fails of its object, thanks to the independent spirit of the later painters, who thought more of their pictures than of architectural restraint.