aisle. They have suffered a little from restoration but not very much.
Their subjects respectively from left to right are, the Life and Death
of St. Thomas à Becket, the Story of St. Eustace, the Parable of the
Prodigal Son, and the Parable of the Good Samaritan. This last is
another "type and antitype" window, and corresponds exactly in the
arrangement of its subjects with one of the lost windows in the choir
of Canterbury as described in the manuscript catalogue before
mentioned. The verses, however, which were in the Canterbury window
are omitted at Sens. To the mediæval mind the parable of the Good
Samaritan was much more than a mere illustration of "neighbourliness."
To them the "man who went down from Jerusalem"--the City of God--"to
Jericho," was Adam leaving Paradise, the thieves were the seven deadly
sins, the Priest and the Levite were the law of Moses, and the Good
Samaritan was Christ Himself. It is this reading of the subject which
is here illustrated. From the fact that at Sens it is isolated, while
at Canterbury it was, as we have seen, one of a series, I think we may
conclude that Sens is the later of the two. The drawing of the
medallions resembles that of the older work at Canterbury, whereas the
setting of them is a little later in character, showing the
beginnings of "mosaic diaper." It seems to me probable, therefore,
that for the subjects the actual drawings from Canterbury were used in
a fresh setting. We know from the Treatise of Theophilus that designs
for windows at this time were drawn out in full size on whitened
boards, which also served apparently as the bench on which the window
was put together. Not much would be left of the drawing when the
window was finished, and the bench would be re-whitewashed for the
next window; but from the fact that similar treatments of the same
subject repeatedly occur, it seems to me not unlikely that drawings of
figure subjects for medallions were kept on separate sheets of
parchment, or in a book, and used again.
[Illustration: PLATE XV
THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT, POITIERS
Late Thirteenth Century]
To the scene of the Good Samaritan rescuing the traveller there are
four scenes showing as a "type" the Passion of Christ. Of these the
Crucifixion is treated in the most striking and original way, which I
rather think occurs also at Bourges. On one side of the cross stands a
female figure wearing a crown and with a nimbus, and receiving in a
chalice the blood which flows from the side of Christ; on the other, a
six-winged seraph is sheathing a sword. The latter is, no doubt, a
symbol of the peace made between God and man by the atonement on the
Cross,--I think PP. Cahier and Martin identify him with the angel that
guarded the gates of Paradise,--while the crowned female figure is, of
course, the Church.
[Sidenote: The Prodigal Son.]
The next window, containing the Parable of the Prodigal Son, differs
from the others in having straight iron-work and a more formal
arrangement of the medallions. I do not think, however, that it is
older. One charming panel in it is a good illustration of the attitude
of the artists of that day on the question of colour. The Prodigal Son
is feeding pigs, of which one is white, two blue, one green, and one
red! The next scene shows him making his way homeward, undeterred by
the efforts to hamper him of several devils as gaily and variously
coloured as the pigs. There is considerable dramatic power shown in
this figure of the Prodigal. Let no one call the drawing of this
period _bad_ drawing. It would be as true to call Japanese drawing
"bad." It is drawing in a convention--a convention different from our
own, but which, once mastered, set the artist free to express action
and emotion without being further hampered by technical difficulties.
[Sidenote: The Becket window.]
Of the other two, the one dealing with the story of St. Thomas à
Becket is the one which most reminds me of Canterbury. Here there is
no doubt that we have the same hand that gave us the Jordan Fitzeisulf
window there. The border is identical,--an unusual thing at that time
even in the same church,--and the representation of Becket's tomb in
the crypt is precisely the same.
[Sidenote: The story of St. Eustace.]
I am less certain about the St. Eustace window. Its general effect is
very different from the others, being flatter and less sparkling; but
this may be due to the work of a restorer. The figures, however, do
not fit and decorate the medallions as well as in the other windows or
in those at Canterbury; in many cases part of a figure has to project
into the border.[9] The medallions themselves, too, are of rather
awkward shapes, and the design of the iron-work not very restful. The
scroll work, however, is very like that in the east window at
Canterbury--so like that one can hardly doubt their common origin. It
may be that here, too, the artist has used some one else's figure
designs, less successfully than in the Good Samaritan window.
There is a Life of St. Eustace at Chartres in which the scenes bear a
general resemblance to those at Sens, but decorate their spaces much
better.
To sum up, I think that these windows at Sens, with the possible
exception of the Life of St. Eustace, are the work of the same artist
as the Jordan Fitzeisulf window and the east window in "Becket's
Crown" at Canterbury; that in the Good Samaritan window he was using
the cartoons of his master, who designed the windows in Canterbury
choir, of which two, as we have seen, remain. He may have come from
Canterbury at the time of the interdict in King John's reign
(1208-1213), when all work there must have been suspended, and not
returned, leaving another to finish the work after the interdict was
removed. It would be a very probable date for the Sens work, but in
the absence of the destroyed windows at Canterbury it is pure
conjecture.
[Illustration: PLATE XVI
HERALDIC PANEL, FROM THE CLERESTORY OF THE NAVE, YORK MINSTER
Early Fourteenth Century]
[Sidenote: Chartres.]
Meanwhile, ever since the fire in 1194, the people of Chartres,
careless of their personal losses, had been working in a flame of
enthusiasm and devotion at the rebuilding of their Cathedral. Every
one, nobles, merchants, craftsmen, and peasants, gave what they could.
Some gave money, some materials, some provisions for the workmen.
Those who had nothing else gave their labour, even harnessing
themselves to carts to drag stone for the building. Heaven itself
seemed to lend its aid, for it is said that Our Lady worked many
miracles of healing at her shrine at Chartres, which soon became a
thirteenth century Lourdes, to which pilgrims came from all countries,
leaving offerings of money or jewels.
Finally, in 1210 the main part of the building seems to have been
finished. "Entirely rebuilt in hewn stone," says William le Breton
some years later, "the Cathedral of Chartres has nothing to fear from
temporal fire from now till the day of judgment, and will save from
eternal fire the many Christians who by their alms have contributed to
its reconstruction."
The great church was now ready to receive its decoration: The altars,
the painting, the sculpture were still to be done, and above all the
one hundred and twenty-five great windows, with the three great roses,
and forty-seven lesser ones had to be filled with the glass which
still makes Chartres Cathedral one of the wonders of the world. In the
year 1226 Saint Louis came to the throne. Eight years later he
acquired the Comté of Chartres, and lent his powerful aid to the work,
giving the great rose window in the north transept and the five
lancets below it, as well as other windows. The King of Castile gave a
window too, and following these royal donors a crowd of princes,
seigneurs, and churchmen added their gifts, while forty-seven windows
were given by the Guilds of Chartres alone. Yet even so it was thirty
years more before the bulk of the work was completed, and the actual
consecration did not take place, for some reason, till October 17,
1260, when it was performed with great pomp and rejoicing before Saint
Louis and his family and an immense concourse of prelates, nobles, and
common people.
There is nothing in the world quite like the Cathedral of Chartres. In
the quality of its work Canterbury is as good or even better, but for
the proper appreciation of the glass of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries it is necessary to have _every_ window of the building
filled with it in order that the eye may get used to the gloom and
attuned to the pitch of the colour; and it is only at Chartres that
this is even approximately the case. I know nothing like the effect on
one of several hours spent in the building, the awe and wonder,
mingled with a strange sort of exaltation, which it produces.
Even when its windows were complete, Canterbury can hardly have had
quite the same effect, for its clerestory is much smaller, and it has
not the splendid width of nave and choir which enables one to see the
great clerestory windows of Chartres so well. In the thirteenth
century the nave at Canterbury was still the old Norman nave of
Lanfranc, of which the windows were, as an old drawing shows,
comparatively small; nor indeed do we know for certain if they had
coloured glass in them.
York is almost as complete as Chartres, but the glass there is nearly
all of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and though it is in a
sense quite as beautiful, with all its great windows twinkling with
lovely colour, yet the subjects are too small to be seen from below,
and there is nothing like the awe-inspiring majesty of the ranks of
colossal saints which fill the clerestory of Chartres.
That the master or masters of Canterbury and Sens came to Chartres is,
I think, certain; the Canterbury tradition is traceable in so much of
the work. Here I imagine he or they ended their life's work, leaving
their pupils and their pupils' successors to carry it on in the later
style which they developed as they went along. One of these, no doubt,
was that Clement of Chartres who signed his name in the window at
Rouen which Mr. Saint has sketched in Plate XIV. I think I can trace
his hand in some of the windows on the south side of the nave at
Chartres, in the treatment of the mosaic diaper in which various
shades of blue have been so skilfully blended as to produce, as at
Rouen, a lovely play and ripple of colour over the whole surface of
the window.
Perhaps the most notable development of the style at Chartres is the
increase in the use of mosaic diaper, of the kind illustrated in Plate
VIII., as a setting for the medallions, instead of the leafy scroll
work formerly used.
At Canterbury the mosaic diaper setting is the exception, only
occurring in one window; at Sens it is introduced tentatively, but at
Chartres it is the rule. The scroll-work filling only occurs, I think,
in three windows of the lower tier. One of these is the St. Eustace
window already mentioned, which to me is strongly reminiscent of
Canterbury work--more so, indeed, as far as the medallions go, than
the similar one at Sens.
[Illustration: PLATE XVII
DETAILS FROM WINDOWS IN THE NORTH AISLE OF NAVE, YORK MINSTER
Fourteenth Century]
[Sidenote: The four extremities.]
It is only at the four extremities of the Cathedral at Chartres that
we find any connected idea governing the choice of subjects. The three
twelfth century windows were already, as I have said, devoted to the
ancestry and life of Christ, and the thirteenth century rose
window above them shows His second coming. The seven great lancets of
the apse are given up to the glorification of the Virgin, the especial
patroness of Chartres. The north rose and the lights below it seem to
show the human ancestry of Christ culminating in Saint Anne and the
Virgin, while opposite in the south transept is the Christ of the
Apocalypse.
In other parts of the church the choice of theme seems to have been
left to the taste of the donors, subject only to the general
arrangement of medallion windows in the lower tier and huge single
figures in the clerestory lights. Thus in the lower windows we find
the story of Noah next to that of St. Lubin, Bishop of Chartres; the
story of St. Eustace next that of Joseph.
One or two of the clerestory windows are medallion windows, the
medallions being on a very large scale, but most of them are filled,
as I say, with single figures of saints, nearly twice life-size. So
large are they that their faces have had to be composed of several
pieces of glass. A brownish pink is used for the flesh, and the eyes
are separate pieces of white with the pupil painted in. As the flesh
colour has in many cases darkened considerably from the effects of
time and weather, the effect of the brilliant whites of the eyes is
somewhat weird and startling.
Here again there seems to be no special idea governing the order of
subjects, which were probably left to the donors, who would choose
their patron saints.
[Sidenote: The Guild windows.]
It is at Chartres that for the first time, as I believe, the donors of
the windows are made much account of in the glass. It is true that at
St. Denis there are two very tiny figures of Abbot Suger,--in one
case, prostrate, in simple monk's dress, at the feet of the Virgin in
the Annunciation, and in the other, holding up a model of the Jesse
window,--and there is a donor at Poitiers, but at Canterbury and Sens
there is nothing to show by whom the windows were given. At Chartres,
however, it is far otherwise. Partly, perhaps, because of the
emulation that had been shown in presenting windows, nearly every one
contains some record of its donor. In the case of those given by the
Guilds this takes the form of a little panel introduced into the
bottom of the window, showing members of the Guild at work--bakers,
butchers, tanners, furriers, money-changers and so on--charming and
valuable little pictures of the everyday life of the time. More noble
donors are represented by their portraits, either kneeling at the
foot of the window or, as in the clerestory of the choir, where the
rose-lights of the tracery are filled with a splendid series of
princes and nobles armed and on horseback, each recognizable by his
shield and banner.
[Sidenote: Amaury de Montfort.]
The one illustrated in Mr. Saint's sketch in Plate XII. is Amaury de
Montfort, brother of our own Simon de Montfort who led the rebellion
of the barons against Henry III., and son of that Simon de Montfort
who led the crusade against the Albigenses and was made Lord of
Languedoc for his pains. Amaury, who succeeded him in 1218, finding
himself not strong enough to hold the country, had ceded his rights
six years later to the King of France, and was made in return
Constable of France.
[Sidenote: Pierre Mauclerc.]
The great rose window of the south transept and the lancets below it
are the gift of Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux and Duke of Brittany.
His arms are in the trefoils of the rose and in the central lancet. At
the foot of the lancets on either side are portraits of himself, his
wife, Alix de Thouars, and his son and daughter, all kneeling. From
the fact that his wife died in 1226 it has been argued that the window
must have been executed, or at least designed, before that date. I do
not know that the argument is absolutely conclusive, but the fact
seems probable. The window, however, cannot be many years older than
this date. The choir would almost certainly be the first part of the
church to be glazed, and the windows in the clerestory there were
certainly not finished till after 1220. One, indeed, has the figure of
a king of France on horseback as donor, who has always been called St.
Louis. It is, however, quite possible, as far as I can see, that the
figure is his father, Louis VIII., or even Philip Augustus, who died
in 1223, for he bears the lilies of France only, without the castle of
Castile.
[Sidenote: St. Louis.]
Assuming therefore that the date of the south rose is shortly before
1226, then Pierre Mauclerc, at the time he gave this and the other
windows in the church which bear his arms, was practically an
independent sovereign. When St. Louis ascended the throne as a boy in
1226, under the Regency of his mother, the wise and beautiful, if
somewhat imperious, Blanche of Castile, Pierre Mauclerc, in company
with Thibault of Champagne, who was Count of Chartres, and many other
barons of France, took up arms against his sovereign, scorning to
acknowledge the overlordship of a boy and a woman. Eight years later
the boy and the woman, aided by the devoted support of the Commons,
had brought them all to submission, and Thibault had yielded up
Chartres to the Crown. It seems to me not unlikely that this latter
event is marked by the gift of the north rose and the lancets below,
which contain St. Louis's own arms and those of his mother. If so, the
glass of Chartres may be considered as a landmark in the history of
the growth of France into a nation. Whether this is so or not, the
north rose cannot in any case be earlier than 1226, the year of St.
Louis's accession.
[Sidenote: The north rose and lancets.]
This north rose, or Rose of France as it is called, has in its centre
light the Virgin with the Child, in a purple tunic with a blue robe
and nimbus against a ground of rich ruby. In the twelve radiating
lights round her are: above her head, four doves; on her right and
left, four angels,--two on either side,--two incensing and two holding
candles; and below, four six-winged seraphs. Outside these are twelve
kings of Judah, the Virgin's ancestors, and outside these again is a
ring of the Prophets who foretold Christ's coming. Below, in the five
great lancets, is a huge figure of Saint Anne carrying the infant
Virgin, having on her right King David and on her left Solomon, and
beyond these Melchizedek and Aaron, types of Christ as King and High
Priest. Below St. Anne is a great shield with the arms of St. Louis,
but under each of the four other figures is a kind of "predella," in
which are shown, as a contrast: below David, Saul falling on his
sword; below Solomon, Jeroboam worshipping the golden calves; below
Melchizedek, Nebuchadnezzar; and below Aaron, Pharaoh being whirled
away, horse and man, in the Red Sea. In this last scene the artist has
been in a dilemma. The backgrounds of these lancets are alternately
red and blue, and Pharaoh's should have been blue, but it represents
the _Red_ Sea, and the artist has had to get out of the difficulty by
making it a kind of maroon purple.
[Sidenote: The south rose and lancets.]
The idea of the window is the same as that of Jesse Tree: Humanity
preparing, through the ages, for the coming of Christ, and culminating
in His Mother. The rose and lancets opposite show the fulfilment. Here
Christ is seen enthroned in the centre of the rose, as St. John beheld
Him, surrounded by angels and by the four great beasts, and by the
four-and-twenty elders seated on their thrones, in a double ring round
the whole.
In the five lancets below are, in the centre, the Virgin and Child,
and on either side the four Evangelists, borne, by a quaint conceit,
like children on the strong shoulders of the major Prophets. The
general arrangement of the windows is the same, but the detail seems
to me to bear out the supposition that the southern rose is by some
years the earlier of the two. In both windows the outer and the inner
ring of figures are contained in circular medallions, but where in the
south rose the "filling in" is done by means of scroll work, in the
north transept "mosaic diaper" is everywhere used. The borders of the
lancets, too, are of an older type, and more beautiful in the south
transept than in the north.
Both, however, are very lovely, and the more I look at them the more I
admire the nameless workers who could so use red and blue--such
difficult colours to combine well. For red and blue are everywhere the
groundwork of the colour scheme--green, purple, brown, and yellow
being only used in small quantities to relieve them. It must be
remembered, too, that the artist _could never see the effect of his
work till it was finished_. Nowadays the stained-glass painter can put
his work together temporarily by fastening it with beeswax to a large
sheet of white glass, and can work on it so; but the artist of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as we know from Theophilus, and as
was probably the case for long after, did all his work "on the bench."
The most he could do would be to hold a few pieces together in his
hands up to the light, but for the rest he had to trust to his
experience and training.
Not quite always did he succeed. Much depended upon his getting just
the right quality of blue, and sometimes this seems to have failed
him. I have already noticed the rather purplish blue which is found in
some of the windows at Lincoln, and this occurs again at Chartres in
the central lancet of the apse, and the one next it on the north
containing the big angel illustrated in Plate X. This purplish blue
when interspersed with red produces at a distance the effect of a
rather unpleasant mauve, making these two windows less attractive in
colour than the others. This purplish blue occurs again in the north
rose of Notre Dame at Paris, but there the artist has countered it by
the use of a good deal of a rather sharp pale green, which completely
balances it and turns the window into perhaps the most glorious of all
the great rose windows of France.
[Illustration: PLATE XVIII
BORDER AND SHIELDS, FROM PETER DE DENE WINDOW, NORTH AISLE OF NAVE,
YORK MINSTER, WITH DETAILS FROM WINDOW IN SOUTH AISLE AND SKETCH OF
CLERESTORY WINDOW
Fourteenth Century]
[Sidenote: The apse.]
Five of the seven great lancets of the clerestory of the apse are
devoted to the glorification of the Virgin Mother, or perhaps one
should say, to the fact of the Virgin Birth. This is what one would
expect at Chartres. Not only is the church dedicated to Notre Dame,
but the place in the Middle Ages was held sacred to her above all
others in France.
Tradition says that the Church occupies the site of a grotto in which
the Druids worshipped "the Virgin that shall bear a child," of whom
they had set up a wooden image, which was preserved by the Christians
when the grotto became a Christian church. Certain it is that down to
the Revolution a very ancient and quite black wooden statue was
worshipped in the Chapel of Notre Dame Sous-terre--the ancient
grotto--where it had been at all events since the days of Fulbert, who
built the eleventh century Cathedral. The Sansculottes burnt it, and
its place has been taken by a modern work which professes to be a copy
of it.
Chartres, too, can boast of the possession of the Holy Veil. Given to
Charlemagne by the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, it
has escaped successive fires, and though cut in two at the Revolution,
is still preserved in the Treasury.
Owing to the great height and narrowness of the lancets, each contains
several figures or figure subjects, one above the other. In the head
of the central lancet is Our Lady enthroned, with her Child on her
knee, and below her are the Annunciation and the Salutation. In the
head of the light on either side is an angel incensing, and in the
lights beyond these, a cherub and a seraph. Below these are Moses,
Aaron,[10] David, and the four major Prophets--Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel--and Daniel. The arrangement of these figures seems, however,
quite haphazard, and as if the original design had not been carried
out. The two remaining lancets, on the extreme right and left,
contain, respectively, scenes from the lives of St. John the Baptist
and St. Peter. How far these are meant to have a bearing on the
central subject I am not quite sure. The uppermost subjects in them
are the Baptism of Christ and the "Domine, quo vadis?"
[Sidenote: The big angel.]
The Big Angel (Plate X.) on the north side of the Virgin is especially
puzzling. The other six lights of the apse have each three figures or
figure subjects, set one above the other in elongated medallions,--Plate
XI. shows two of them, King David and Ezekiel,--and at the foot of
each is a panel showing the donors. The other figures are so set as to
form regular tiers round the apse, but this angel is twice the size of
any of them and forces the figure below--Aaron--down out of line,
leaving no room for another figure between him and the donor.
Perhaps this light represents part of a design for the apse which was
afterwards modified in order to get more figures in. The donor is one
Gaufridus, who has been identified with a certain Godfrey d'Illiers, a
gentleman of the neighbourhood, whereas the rest are given by the
Guilds--the bakers, butchers, money-changers, and furriers, which
latter are seen actually bringing their window.
The Prophets bear a good deal of resemblance to the figures from the
clerestory at Canterbury. The Isaiah at both places wears the same
curious headdress--a little round hat, not unlike the latest form of
"bowler" of our own days. The figures are not from the same drawings,
for the attitudes are different, but the Chartres artist has at least
remembered Canterbury choir, which was probably the work of his
master, thirty or forty years earlier.
[Sidenote: The canopy.]