STAINED GLASS
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STAINED GLASS
and studded with gemlike blobs of black, and the
blues, which are of a greenish azure hue, while the
general colour treatment is extremely oriental. The
drawing of the figures is most effective, although
simple in line, and Byzantine in character, differing
in this point from those at St. Denis, which are
Romanesque. The painting is pecuUar in that the
hair of the figures is rendered in solid black, and not
in lines. Although Le Mans was one of the first
places where windows made by the new process were
used, yet it did not become the centre of work; the
city of Chartres took the lead, and became the great-
est of the schools of medieval glass-painting, and from
it the new art slowly made its way to Germany and
England, keeping always its essentially French char-
acter. Even to-day the Chartres windows are the
most beautiful in existence.
At the very beginning — the eleventh and twelfth centuries — there were two methods of work: one school of artists freely employed paint in their \vin- dows, the other avoided its use, striving to obtain the result sought by a purely mosaic method, a system destined to be revived and developed in after ages; but the former school almost at once gained the mastery and held it for eight hundred years. Exam- ples of the early work of these rival schools can best be studied by comparing the painted windows erec- ted at Le Mans with those at Straaburg, which were built in accord with mosaic motives. In many of the first windows the figure subjects were painted upon small pieces of glass imbedded in a wide orna- mental border, a large number of these medalUons entering into the composition of a single window, and each section held in place by an iron armature — a constructive necessity, as the window-openings were without muUions. The medalhons were aU related to one another through their colour key, depicting various incidents in the same history or a number of points in a theological proposition. This form of window, peculiarly adapted to a single light, con- tinued in fashion from the twelfth century until the introduction of traceni-, and in some parts of France long after the single light had given way to the mul- lioned window. Contemporaneous with these medal- lion windows there were two other kinds: the canopy and Jesse windows. In the first there was a represen- tation of one or two figures, executed in rich colours on a coloured or white ground within borders and under a low-crowned, rude, and simple canopy, usu- ally out of proportion to the figure or figures it cov- ered. The second variety, of pictorial genealogy of the Redeemer, consisted of a tree or vine springing from the recumbent form of Jesse, lying asleep at the foot of the window, the branches forming a series of panels, one above another, in which kings and patriarchs of the royal house of the Lion of Juda were pictured.
The windows of the twelfth century are admired on account of their ingenious combinations of colour, their rich rug-like effects and the brilliancy of the glass. It was reserved, however, for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to see the full unfolding of the possibilities and inherent beauty of coloured glass. Among the most noted of these windows are the exquisite jewel-like ones in the cathedral of Char- tres, a hundred and forty-three in number, contain- ing no less than one thousand three hundred and fifty subjects, with over three thousand figures; there are also some fine examples to be seen at Reims. Bourgcs, Tours, and Poitiers. These magnificent windows are only a small portion of the almost incred- ible number that once existed. The windows of the thirteenth century are not only more brilliant in colour, but the colours are more skilfully blended than in those of the preceding century; at the same time the drawing of the figures is better the faces are oval in form, more delicately treated, often re-
fined and vigorous; the eyes have a natural expres-
sion, and the hair is rendered in lines of varying
thickness. The compositions are simple and not
over-crowded, the draperies are broader in treatment,
the ornaments and architectural details, taking their
motives mostly from natural objects, are well drawn.
The range of subjects represented being limited by
the paramount object of all ecclesiastical decorations
of the Middle Ages, viz. the instruction of the ilht-
erate and promotion of piety among the people,
these windows present scenes from Biblical history
and the lives of the saints, and symbohc portrayals
of the dogmas of the Church. In fact they were
sermons which "reached the heart through the eyes
instead of entering at the ears". But their choice
of subjects was not made at random; it fell under the
same rule that guided the encyclopedias of the time
in their classification of the universe, commencing
with God and the creation of angelic beings, and so
on through nature, scirncr, ethics, and history.
The windows were inilei'l iHinns in glass, "The first
canto, reflecting the imauf nf Cldil a.s the Creator, the
Father, and the giver of all gooil gifts; the second,
nature, organic and inorganic; the third, science;
the fourth, the moral sense; and la-stly, the entire
world". Where there were not enough windows in
a church to carry out the complete scheme, one or
more portions were represented.
The windows of the fourteenth eenturj' show a steady increase in knowledge of the art, more particu- larly in matters of drawing and harmonious use of colour. The later advance was brought about by the discovery of the yellow stain, which placed in the artists' hands not only various shades of yellow, but also a colour with which they could warm their white glass. It also led them to develop a style of glass window that first made its appearance in the days of St. Bernard and was used largely by the Cistercians, whose churches were a protest against the lu.xuiy, the pomp of colour and ornamentation, of those built by rival monastic bodies, particularly by the art-loving Cluniac monks. These grisaille, or stippled, windows were white and black, or gray and gray, brown and brown, warmed by the yellow stain and were painted upon white or clear glass. Towards the end of the fourteenth century the artists began to break away from the tutelage of the archi- tect and abandoned the sound rules of the great school of the thirteenth century, ignoring the princi- ple that "all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of a building". The sins of the glass-painters of the fifteenth century were still greater, for it mattered little to them if their windows were out of key with the architectural design of the building in which they were placed; their sole wish seemed to be to make their work do them honour. This abandonment of the fixed canons of the art, the abuse of its materials, and the exag- geration of individualism marked the beginning of the end of good glasswork, the deterioration becom- ing complete just as a revolution in religious thought was born into the world which destroyed in its des- tructi\-e march not only the glass-painter's art, but many others, and also wrecked the art treasures of medieval culture, while it paralyzed for years, in Northern Europe, ecclesiastical art of every kind.
In the sixteenth century the windows were purely pictorial and wholly divorced from their architectural surroundings. At the end of this century and all through the next the windows rapidly degenerated, the art of making them finally passing from the hands of artists into the greedy grasp of tradesmen. The last windows made in which there was still some artis- tic merit are those in the Church of St. John at Gouda. In these the painters introduced landscapes, arcades, and corridors, aiming at absolute realism and start- ling perspectives, and treating their glass as they
