esteem from the drawing being conceived in an archaic convention,--a
convention different to our own,--and from having suffered from
restoration, the fact remains that at no time did the artist
understand better the possibilities and limitations of his art and
adopt a sounder technique in regard to them.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] It seems to have been the practice of glass-workers in the Middle
Ages to describe the different colours in glass by the jewel they most
nearly resembled. A survival of this at the present day is their
universal habit of calling red glass "ruby."
[Illustration: PLATE VI
SCROLL-WORK, FROM THE EAST WINDOW, CANTERBURY
Twelfth or early Thirteenth Century]
IV
TWELFTH CENTURY GLASS
The few examples I have mentioned are the only ones which can with any
probability be dated from the eleventh century, but of twelfth century
work much more remains.
[Sidenote: Poitiers.]
The window at Poitiers in Plate II. shows little if any change in
style from the Le Mans window in Plate I. It is still almost pure
Byzantine, and if I were to judge by style alone I should place this
window very early indeed. A fragment of an inscription has, however,
been found on it--DITHANC ... BLAS,--which has been thought to mean
that the window was the gift of one Maurice de Blason, who became
Bishop of Poitiers in 1198. If so, and if we are right in identifying
the Le Mans window with Bishop Hoel's glazing, a whole century
separates the two.
The probable explanation is that the Byzantine style had lingered on
in the south-east of France, as it may well have done, whereas north
of the Loire a school had by this time arisen, and had been
flourishing for many years, which was producing work both in France
and England of a very different and far more advanced character.
[Sidenote: The school of Chartres, St. Denis, and Canterbury.]
The twelfth and early thirteenth century windows at Chartres, St.
Denis, Canterbury and Sens show such resemblance to each other that
there can be little doubt of their common origin. As, however, their
execution covers a period of at least seventy years, one man cannot
have been responsible for them all.
Probably they represent the work of a group of men working
together--perhaps never more than half a dozen at one time--under a
master who was trained by his predecessor, and who in turn would be
succeeded in the leadership by the best of his pupils. Several of
these masters in succession must have been men of genius, and thus
between them they evolved a style which, carried on by a succession of
lesser men, governed design in stained glass for a century to come.
[Illustration: PLATE VII
BORDER, FROM THE TRINITY CHAPEL, CANTERBURY
Twelfth or early Thirteenth Century]
The rise of this school is the first of the periodic impulses to which
I have referred, and the work they produced was, for its dignity and
grandeur, unequalled for two hundred years--if it has ever been
equalled at all.
The figure of Methuselah or "Matusale" in Plate III., which is one of
the few remaining of the original figures once in the choir clerestory
at Canterbury (it is now in the S. Transept), is a good example of
their work, and a comparison of it with the Poitiers window (which is
actually later in date but in the older style) shows the greatness of
the change they effected. The change is, in fact, that from ancient to
modern art: from Byzantine, the last lingering survival of the great
classic tradition of Greece, to Gothic, the first expression of the
art of the modern world.
Who were these men and where did they come from? Some would have it
that there was a great central school at Chartres, but there is little
evidence for it. When Abbot Suger built the great abbey of St. Denis,
which was dedicated in 1142, he filled it with glass, "painted," says
his secretary, Monk William, "with exquisite art by many masters of
_divers nations_" ("de diversis nationibus"). Does this mean that some
of them were English or Germans, or only men from other provinces than
the Ile de France? No one can say; but they must have been working
together to produce the results they did. One statement of the Monk
William's leads me to think that the work was done on the spot. He
says the work was very costly, because they "used sapphires to colour
their glass." Now this is an obvious misunderstanding, due to the
practice, in those days, of describing coloured glass by the name of
the precious stone it resembled, and such a mistake is most likely to
have been made in conversation with the artists themselves.
It is, of course, always possible that they had no permanent
headquarters but took up their abode in whatever city their chief work
was for the time being, there erected their furnaces, which the
description of Theophilus shows to have been simple affairs, and
remained there till their work was completed--which must have taken
some years in every case--and then moved on to the next work.
Much has been made of the fact that a window in Rouen bears the
signature of one Clement of Chartres,--"Clemens vitrearius Carnutensis
me fecit,"--but that window is a hundred and forty years later than
St. Denis. By that time the whole Cathedral at Chartres had been
filled with glass, a task which extended over thirty years; and
Clement may well have learned his trade and passed from apprentice to
master there. No other artist of the school has signed his name
anywhere, nor has Clement anywhere else.
One can tell pretty well the order in which the most important of
their work which remains was done. First Chartres and St. Denis,--so
near together that one cannot say which came first,--then Canterbury,
Sens, and then back to Chartres again, where a fire had destroyed all
but the west windows. This, however, probably represents only a small
portion of their labours, of which the rest has disappeared. For
instance, a few fragments set among later work in York Minster have
all the characteristics of this school; and we know that Prior
Conrad's choir at Canterbury, which was completed in 1130 and
destroyed in 1175, was renowned for the splendour of its glass, which
may have been their work too.
A window at Le Mans, rather later than the one illustrated, and which
Mr. Westlake thinks may be dated about 1120, shows signs of the new
movement. It consists of a series of subjects from the stories of SS.
Gervasius and Protasius, and already shows the arrangement of small
medallions of simple shape, surrounded by ornament filling the
rectangular openings of the iron-work, though from the fact that some
of the medallions seem to have been cut down, they are probably not in
their original position. In the drawing of the subjects the artist is
breaking away from the Byzantine tradition. The new wine is bursting
the old bottles. He is a man in love with life, and when he depicts a
group of men stoning a saint he likes to make them really throwing,
and to show in their faces, as well as he knows how, that they are
thorough ruffians.
Next in antiquity to this window, and some twenty or thirty years
later (1142-1150), come the earliest of the windows at Chartres and at
St. Denis.
[Sidenote: Chartres.]
In the year A.D. 1134 a terrible fire destroyed the town of Chartres
and so damaged the west end of the Cathedral that it had to be pulled
down and rebuilt--a work which took some fifteen years to accomplish,
while the towers were not finished till twenty years later still. The
three windows over the west door were filled with glass some time
between 1145 and 1150.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII
BORDER AND MOSAIC DIAPER, FROM THE TRINITY CHAPEL, CANTERBURY
Thirteenth Century]
[Sidenote: The west windows.]
In early times churches seem to have been peculiarly liable to
destruction by fire, owing perhaps to the number of wooden buildings
by which they were surrounded. The early history of every great
cathedral is one of successive disastrous conflagrations, after each
of which the building rises once more, larger and more splendid. Thus,
in 1194, another fire completely destroyed the whole of the Cathedral
with the exception of the newly built west end, which included the
three windows in question. These escaped damage, protected perhaps by
the immense depth of their embrasures, and still remain almost
unimpaired to this day, the largest and most perfect windows of their
time that have come down to us. In them one feels that the new
movement has found itself and produced a great man.
Two of them, the central one, which is the largest, being some 30 feet
high and 10 wide, and that on the south, are medallion windows,
containing scenes from the life of Christ. The bars of the iron-work,
which are about 3 feet apart, divide them into a series of regular
squares, which are filled with square and circular medallions; in the
central window the figures in the medallions are relieved against
alternate backgrounds of ruby and blue. The ruby of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries is a wonderful colour. It is never of a perfectly
even tint, each piece having, as it were, its own character, and the
colour seems to have a slightly granulated or "crumbly" texture,
which gives it a quality unknown in later glass. So beautiful was it
evidently considered that the artist seldom or never attempted to
enrich it with painting.
[Sidenote: The Jesse tree.]
The third window, that on the north, is filled with a "Tree of Jesse."
The subjects of stained-glass windows in this First Period were chosen
with one object--the exposition of the Christian Doctrine, and of this
the human descent of Christ was an essential part. Accordingly, at all
periods in the history of mediæval stained glass we find windows
devoted to the representation of "the Tree of Jesse."
The arrangement is always the same as in this window at Chartres. The
figure of Jesse lies recumbent at the foot of the window, and from his
loins rises the "Tree"--a mass of branching scroll work with
conventional foliage, spreading over the whole window, carrying on its
branches David and other human ancestors of Christ, and culminating in
the Virgin and Christ Himself at the top of the window. On either side
are ranged the Prophets who foretold His coming, and the whole,
surrounded by a rich border, forms, at Chartres, a mass of jewelled
colour some 9 feet wide and 25 feet high.
This window and the one of which a part, identical in design, remains
at St. Denis, are the oldest examples I know of a Jesse tree in
stained glass, and whether or not they were the first to be made,
their design formed a model for others for long after.
[Sidenote: La Belle Verrière.]
The remainder of the windows in the Cathedral, including the western
rose, are of the thirteenth century with one exception--the one in the
south choir aisle, which contains the great figure of the Virgin known
as "Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière": the only window, as far as I
know, to which in former times people knelt by hundreds in adoration,
and before which they still occasionally burn a candle.
The Virgin with the Child on her knee sits enthroned in the upper part
of the window, and surrounded by angels, on a much smaller scale,
incensing and holding candles, while below are medallions illustrating
the Marriage at Cana and the Temptation. The angels and the medallions
are of the thirteenth century, but the figures of the Virgin and Child
with their background are almost certainly of the twelfth. Probably
the veneration in which they were held caused them to be rescued from
the fire,--hurriedly broken out, perhaps, from the surrounding
glass,--and then reset in thirteenth century work after the Cathedral
was rebuilt.[6] The Virgin is dressed in a robe of pale greyish-blue,
of a colour one seldom sees in later work, relieved against a
background of deep ruby, set with jewels of a darker blue. The
precision of the colour harmony is wonderful, and no drawing I have
seen of the window gives, even in outline, the beautiful poise of the
head, bent in gracious benediction.
Although I have said that the workers of this school were breaking
away from the Byzantine tradition and looking at life with their own
eyes, yet it is never possible for men suddenly to produce work wholly
independent of tradition, even when they are foolish enough to try; so
we find in this case Greek art, through Byzantine, retains enough
influence with these men to give to their work a dignity and restraint
which is lacking in that of the thirteenth century. This is very
noticeable wherever one gets the two in close juxtaposition, as at
Chartres and also at Canterbury. There is an impressive severity of
design and a feeling for proportion in the figure of the Virgin in La
Belle Verrière which one misses in the surrounding work, which,
though very beautiful, is by comparison small and fussy in treatment.
[Sidenote: St. Denis.]
In the meantime, in 1142, while the west front of Chartres Cathedral
was still in progress, the great Abbot Suger had finished the
construction of his abbey of St. Denis, near Paris. He was a great
patron of the arts, as well as a good man and the first statesman of
his age, and he seems to have spared no pains in the decoration of the
church and especially in the filling of the windows with stained
glass. Of this glass, alas! only the merest remnant is left,
consisting of several medallions and part of a "Tree of Jesse." They
have been collected and placed in the chapels of the apse of the
church, embedded in garishly coloured ornament--the work of M.
Gérente, acting under the orders of the great and terrible
Viollet-le-Duc--which effectually prevents one taking any pleasure in
their beauty. They are, however, very interesting to study. Whether or
not they were done before or after the three windows at Chartres it
is, I think, impossible to say for certain. The history of the two
buildings shows that they must have been done within a few years of
each other (two of those at St. Denis contain figures of Suger as
donor, and he died in 1152), and they are certainly the work of the
same school. The Jesse tree in particular is either a copy, or the
original, on a smaller scale, of the one at Chartres, being almost
identical in design.
Many of the medallions are interesting from their deeply symbolical
character. In one, for instance, is Christ, with the seven gifts of
the Holy Spirit, represented, as in the Jesse tree, by doves, each
contained in a circle and connected with His breast by rays. With His
left hand He unveils a figure labelled "Synagoga," and with His right
He crowns another figure labelled "Ecclesia."
Another very curious medallion represents the _foederis arca_, "ark
of the covenant." A figure of the Almighty supports a crucifix which
rises from the ark,--a square box on four wheels,--while round about
are the four symbols of the Evangelists. The cross is thus shown as
the symbol of God's new covenant with man as the ark was that of the
old. A quaint feature is that the artist, while feeling that all four
wheels had got to be shown somehow, has been in some difficulty as to
how to show the farther pair, and has therefore placed them above the
ark, as if resting on it, as an ancient Egyptian artist might have
done in his place.
In most of the medallions the teaching of the subject is emphasized
and the application pointed out by rhyming Latin hexameters, doggerel
in style and innocent of prosody, such as:
Quod Moyses velat, Christi doctrina revelat.
The same feature is found in the glass at Canterbury. None of the
verses are identical, but the literary style is the same.
[Sidenote: Angers and Chalons.]
At Angers there are some remains of twelfth century windows which are
thought to be about the same date as those of Chartres and St. Denis,
or even a little earlier, and there are some at Chalons, but they
cannot be dated with any exactitude, and I have had no opportunity of
examining them. Next after these in point of date should, I think,
come the earliest of the windows at Canterbury, though nearly thirty
years must separate the two.
[Sidenote: Fragments at York.]
A few fragments in York Minster, however, show where the artists may
have been occupied meantime. There are some scraps in the
clerestory--scraps of a Jesse window of which the details are almost
identical with the St. Denis work--and a medallion representing Daniel
in the Lion's Den, which is glazed into the foot of the centre light
of the great thirteenth century grisaille windows in the north
transept, known as "the Five Sisters." It is a circular medallion
filled out to a square form with ornament, no doubt to fit a square of
the iron-work, and strongly resembles the St. Denis work.
[Sidenote: Canterbury choir.]
Of the stained glass of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which
was once the glory of Canterbury Cathedral, only a remnant has escaped
the zeal of the Puritans. The minister placed in charge of the
Cathedral under the Commonwealth, one Richard Culmer, known to his
enemies as "Blue Dick," though I do not know why, relates with glee
how he stood on a ladder sixty steps high with a whole pike in his
hand and "rattled down proud Beckett's glassie bones."
I own I feel less resentment against "Blue Dick," who at least thought
the windows important enough to smash, than against that later vandal
Wyatt, who in the eighteenth century sold the glass at Salisbury for
the price of the lead in it, or those who even now in many places are
letting old glass perish for want of proper care.
[Illustration: PLATE IX
WESTERN LANCETS AND ROSE, CHARTRES CATHEDRAL
Twelfth and Thirteenth Century]
Even "Blue Dick" seems to have tired of his pious labours before they
were quite finished, for, of the early windows, he has left us two in
the north choir aisle, and four in the Trinity Chapel east of the
choir, in which most of the old glass remains. Besides these there are
many medallions and numerous fragments scattered about in other
windows and embedded in the work of the modern restorer, and several
large figures from the clerestory, of which the Methuselah in Plate
III., now in the south transept, is one.
In the year 1174, four years after Becket's death, the splendid choir
built by Prior Conrad in 1130 was completely destroyed by fire, and
the monks immediately set about building a new one. Gervase the monk
has left a detailed account of the progress of the great work, year by
year and pillar by pillar, for the space of ten years, first under the
French master-builder, William of Sens, and then under his successor,
William the Englishman ("little in body but in workmanship of many
kinds acute and honest"), so that we know just when each part of the
work was finished. Now in the spring of 1180, he relates, the monks
had a great desire to celebrate Easter in the new choir, and to
gratify them the master, by a special effort, succeeded in getting the
building finished and roofed in almost to the east end of the choir,
where he placed a hoarding to keep out the weather.
Since we are told that in this hoarding there were three glass
windows, it seems reasonable to suppose that the other windows were
glazed too. Now since both the windows in the north choir aisle and,
when in its original position, the Methuselah on Plate III. were well
to the westward of the point at which the hoarding was erected, I have
no doubt that they were in position by this date, in which opinion I
am confirmed by the character of the glass itself. That in the Trinity
Chapel to the east of the hoarding would naturally be later.
The same arrangement seems to have been followed at Canterbury as
elsewhere of having large figures in the clerestory and small
medallions in the lower windows.
The Methuselah, which seems to have formed one of a series of
Patriarchs,--of which three others remain, which filled the windows in
the clerestory of the choir,--is a particularly dignified figure, and
it is noticeable that the throne he is seated on is of somewhat the
same type as that of Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière at Chartres. As
in all windows of this date, the flesh is executed in glass of a
brownish-pink colour instead of white, which later on became the
rule.
This illustration shows very well the early method of painting. Where
possible, as in the rich blue of the background, the glass is left
quite clear. The folds of the drapery and the features are drawn in
sure and vigorous line work. Diaper is used very sparingly, only when
it is necessary to "keep back" and subdue a piece of glass, as in the
case of the green cushion to the throne and the border of the tunic.
If you can imagine the glass with these pieces left clear or with any
other piece diapered, you will see how unerring has been the artist's
judgment.[7]
The letters of the inscription are scratched out of a dark ground of
enamel. This is the invariable method used in early glass, which
indeed is always (except in grisaille, of which more later) conceived
as a light design on a dark ground. In the fifteenth century the
reverse was the case, and then we get inscriptions in dark lettering
on a light ground.
The arched form of the top of the background shows how it once fitted
a clerestory light, though doubtless with a border, and the space
above has been filled with scroll work of, I think, the same date,
which may have come from some of the medallion windows in the choir
aisles.
The two medallion windows in the north choir aisle formed part, as we
know from an old MS. still in existence, of a series of twelve dealing
with the life and parables of our Lord.
In style they very closely resemble the St. Denis work, perhaps a
little further developed. Some of the medallions, indeed, are almost
identical with those at St. Denis, notably that of the Magi on
horseback following the star. The figures are tall and dignified, and
both for drawing and decorative placing are far better than much work
of the succeeding century. The Calling of Nathaniel is a particularly
good panel.
The westernmost of the two windows still retains the early arrangement
found at Chartres, the iron-work consisting simply of straight bars
dividing it into a series of regular squares, which are filled
alternately with circular and square medallions.
[Illustration: PLATE X
THE BIG ANGEL, FROM THE CLERESTORY OF THE APSE, CHARTRES CATHEDRAL
Thirteenth Century]
The other one of the two has bent iron-work of a very simple design,
consisting simply of four circles connected by straight bars, thus
marking the transition from one form to another; which is another
reason for dating these windows between the west windows of Chartres,
where the iron-work is all straight, and those at Sens, where it is
nearly all bent. The small scale-sketch in the corner of Plate
IV. shows the arrangement of the iron-work and the medallions. The
panel of Noah in the Ark is from one of the semicircles on the left
side of the window. The spaces between the medallions are filled up
with beautiful foliated scroll work, on a ruby ground of the same
character as that round the head of Methuselah.
The arrangement of their subjects is so interesting, forming one of
the first and most complete examples of a "type and antitype" window,
that I shall describe it in some detail.
In each of these two windows the upper two-thirds, or thereabouts, of
the glass is in its original position, while the lower panels, smashed
by the pike of "Blue Dick," who seems at this point to have got tired
of going up his ladder, have been filled with subjects from other
windows of the series.
Down the centre run the subjects from the life of Christ, while on
each side are the "types" or subjects from the Old Testament which
illustrate it. Thus the westernmost of the two, once the second of the
series, begins at the top with the Magi following the star, while on
one side is Balaam, with the words of his prophecy, "There shall come
a star out of Jacob, etc.," and on the other Isaiah, with the words,
"The Gentiles shall come to Thy light, and kings to the brightness of
Thy rising."