have never yet found any one to give me a clue to. It has nothing to
do with the upper subjects, two of which are the martyrdoms of SS.
Peter and Paul, the third being merely fragments. From its position,
and from the fact that the costume is contemporary with the painting,
I should rather imagine that it refers to some local story, perhaps
connected in some way with the gift of the window. On the right, a
figure in a red cope with a red skull-cap but no nimbus, holding a
scourge or "disciplina" in his hand, is pointing apparently in
denunciation at what appears to be a cringing figure in brown, much
broken, among a crowd of others, some of whom are women. In the next
panel, which is also much broken and jumbled, the same figures seem to
be there, but the one in red seems to be exhorting rather than
denouncing. The third or left-hand panel is in much better condition,
and here we see the figures plainly. The one in brown, which turns out
to be that of a layman, without armour, but with a dagger at his side
and a spiked mace slung over his left arm, is kneeling at the feet of
the figure in red, who is seated, and with one hand laid on the
penitent's head is with the other firmly administering the
"disciplina" to his back! The border is of monks (or canons) in their
stalls, and the only heraldry in the window is contained in the
painted diaper on the blue background, and consists of spread eagles
and rampant lions, like the border of the Peter de Dene window. The
remains of the donor's name--W ... MN ... CTON--gives me no clue.
[Sidenote: The south aisle.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXII
WINDOW IN ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHAPEL, ST. OUEN, ROUEN
Fourteenth Century]
[Sidenote: The de Mauley window.]
The first five windows in the south aisle seem to me to follow these
immediately in order of execution. The style is just a little more
advanced; stain is used more freely, and the canopies begin to grow up
into the white panel above them until their pinnacles reach its centre
and do away with the coloured boss there altogether; they spread into
the borders in many cases in order to give more room to the figures
under them, thus giving rise to the three-gabled form of canopy. In
colour they are still very beautiful, but have suffered much more
damage than those in the north aisle. Several of them have been
repaired and restored by Peckitt, of York, as the inscriptions show,
at the end of the eighteenth century, but Peckitt's restoration was
merciful compared to that which the fourth one has undergone at the
hands of a modern firm of stained-glass manufacturers. Whole
quantities of the old glass have been replaced by new, and the whole
has been smeared with some brownish mess to make it look old
again. As a result, all life and beauty have gone out of the window
which is merely a sort of embalmed corpse, and this is the more to be
regretted that it seems to have been a particularly interesting
window. The lower panels each contain a pair of kneeling figures, five
knights, and one churchman who hold aloft shields which show them to
be various members of the Yorkshire family of de Mauley of Mulgrave.
The founder of the family was the Poitevin ruffian, Piers de Mauley
who, at King John's orders, murdered Prince Arthur and was rewarded
for this service with the hand and estates of an unfortunate Yorkshire
heiress. The descendants of this miscreant seem, however, to have been
gallant soldiers who distinguished themselves in Scotland and Gascony
and were made barons by Edward I. A peculiarity of the family was that
the eldest son was always called Peter, and they distinguished
themselves by numbers, like kings. One of the portraits must be the
particular Peter who afterwards, in 1346, commanded the forces which
Queen Philippa raised in her husband's absence against the invading
Scots, whom he routed at Neville's Cross, taking their king, David
Bruce, prisoner, and partly avenging Bannockburn. An interesting
point of heraldry is the way in which the arms of the different sons
are distinguished, not by the marks of cadency used later, but by the
addition of different charges to the original shield which is or, a
bend sable.
The fifth window was once a Tree of Jesse but is now a mere wreck. It
is, however, the earliest Jesse Tree I know of in which the stem and
foliage of the tree are green.
These windows show a progressive increase in the use of white for
flesh colour instead of the brownish pink formerly used. At first,
white is used only for women's faces, and then for those of saints of
both sexes, brown-pink continuing to be used for other people till
quite the middle of the century or later. Stain is not used on the
hair at first, but sometimes a thin brown matt of enamel is laid all
over the hair which at a distance has almost the effect of stain.
[Sidenote: The sixth window in the north aisle.]
The sixth window on the north side is, I think, a good many years
later in date than these ten windows we have been considering, and is
much less beautiful. A canopy and border from it are shown in Plate
XVIII.a on the right. Although the same general arrangement is adhered
to as in the other windows, the treatment is much coarser; the
crockets of the canopies are big, heavy, and ugly, of a
brownish-yellow pot-metal, but at the same time stain is freely,
indeed lavishly, used, not only in the canopies and borders but, for
the first time in the Cathedral, in the quarries of the grisaille as
well. The borders of heraldry or little figures have given way to
running patterns of natural foliage of the more common fourteenth
century type. There are four different patterns of these borders in
the window, so that some probably came from another window of the same
date, perhaps in the now empty seventh window.
[Sidenote: The west windows.]
Later still are the three west windows and the sixth in the south
aisle which mark a further stage in development. Here we have at last
a definite date to help us, for the contract with the glazier, one
Robert, is still in existence and is dated 1338, so we may assume the
windows were finished about 1340. It is difficult to judge these
windows fairly, for they were subjected to a most drastic restoration
in the eighteenth century, and the great central one is further
disfigured by protective quarry glazing on the outside, which reduces
it to a dirty brown. I do not think, however, that they can ever have
been, comparatively speaking, very good, and I am inclined to look
upon them as perhaps the poorest work of the Middle Ages. Plate XIX.
shows one light of the northernmost of the three, that at the west end
of the north aisle. It will be seen that the canopy has now grown to
an absurd height and fills the whole light, and neither in its
proportions nor in its details is it very graceful. The border is now
growing narrower and narrower, and is eventually doomed to disappear
altogether. The crockets of the gable are the only yellow pot-metal
used, silver stain being used everywhere else, and not very
artistically, though how far this is due to the restorer it is
difficult to say.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIII
DETAILS, FROM ST. OUEN, ROUEN
Fourteenth Century]
The same qualities may be observed in the great central west window of
the nave, also the work of the glazier Robert. Here, too, the canopies
over the various rows of figures which form the design meet the feet
of the row above, and in the top row shoot up to the head of the
light. Their stiff awkwardness is in curious contrast to the wonderful
flowing grace of the actual tracery of the window which contains them.
The treatment of the figures, too, is dull. For the eight archbishops
who form the bottom row, only two different patterns have been used,
and in the row above the eleven apostles have been got into eight
lights by making six of them squeeze, most uncomfortably, two in a
niche.
The St. Stephen (Plate XX.) is from the sixth window in the south
aisle, which seems to be of about the same date as the west windows
and probably by the same glazier Robert. Instead of conforming to the
design of the other windows in the aisle, he has filled it with three
figures larger than life under tall canopies. It has likewise suffered
much from eighteenth century restoration (the head, I think, is new),
and has, besides, the same faults as the west windows. To me its chief
interest is in the ornamentation of the saints' dalmatic, which
affords the earliest example I know of the use of silver stain on blue
glass, which may be seen in the ring-like ornaments on the blue
stripes.
[Sidenote: All Saints', North Street, and St. Martin's, Micklegate.]
The parish churches of York contain a good deal of fourteenth as well
as fifteenth century glass. The windows in the west end of the north
aisle of All Saints', North Street, and the south aisle of St.
Martin's, Micklegate, Plates XXI. and XXII., are not very easy to
place with regard to the Cathedral work. My own opinion is that they
are rather later and show a recovery in quality. The canopies are as
big as ever, but there is more taste and refinement in the drawing,
both of the figures and ornaments, and more experience as well as
taste in the use of the silver stain. At the same time, they contain
later features, such as the attempt at perspective in the battlements
above the canopy in Plate XXI., and in the brackets of a sort of
balcony (not shown in the illustration) below. The curious device
above the canopy in the window at St. Martin's (Plate XXII.) is, I
imagine, the "merchant's mark" of the donor.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] From the east.
[14] In 1306 this would be William de Greenfield, under whom the nave
was building, and in 1320 William de Melton, who finished it.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIV
CANOPY, FROM ALL SAINTS', NORTH STREET, YORK
Fifteenth Century]
XI
FOURTEENTH CENTURY GLASS IN FRANCE
[Sidenote: St. Pierre at Chartres.]
In France the change of style seems to have occurred very much at the
same time as in England. There is some transitional work in St. Urbain
at Troyes, to which Viollet-le-Duc gives the date 1295. This would
make it a few years earlier in all probability than the Chapter-House
at York, but the type of grisaille is rather earlier too, still
consisting partly, like that at Exeter, of conventional foliage. The
clerestory windows of the fine church of St. Pierre at Chartres,
whatever their precise date, certainly mark the local change from the
previous style.
The church had been begun as early as 1150, but its progress was slow
and it was not completed till 1225, though the choir had been glazed
in 1172.[15] The upper part of this choir was, however, pulled down
in 1270, and rebuilt with large traceried windows, filling all the
wall space of the clerestory. This again was not finished till 1310,
but this date probably refers to the completion of the interior
decoration which was always preceded by the glazing of the windows. On
the whole, I think it is fairly safe to conclude that the choir
windows were done about 1300, or a little before.
The style is still that of the First Period but modified,
experimentally as it were, to suit new conditions. Each window has
four tall narrow lights with tracery above, and every other light is
filled with two large figures placed one above the other each in a
medallion, which is squeezed by the narrowness of the light into an
elongated form, while the space between the medallions is filled in
the old way with mosaic diaper of red and blue. In compliance,
however, with the growing demand for more light in churches, the other
two lights in each window are filled entirely with grisaille. This
would give a lop-sided appearance to a single window, but seen
together with only a slender shaft between window and window, they
form a succession of alternate white and coloured vertical stripes all
round the choir, an interesting and almost unique method of combining
figure and grisaille. Altogether the clerestory windows may be
considered as the very last work of the First Period already modified
and influenced by the spirit of change that was in the air.
In the clerestory windows of the nave the change has already come
about. Although in the richness of colouring there is still a
reminiscence of the earlier style, yet the medallion has vanished, and
everywhere, both over single figures and over subject panels, we find
decorated canopies, not yet, however, of exaggerated proportions, and
with a complete absence of yellow stain. In the general arrangement
the same idea is seen as in the choir, but it has had to be adapted to
a different form of window-opening. The nave is part of the original
church of 1225, and the clerestory windows consist, like those of the
Cathedral, of broad lights grouped in pairs, with a rose above each
pair--the germ of tracery. Every alternate pair is entirely filled
with small coloured scenes from the life of a saint,--no longer in
medallions, but each framed under a small white canopy,--but the
windows between them have only a vertical stripe of colour down the
centre of each light containing two large figures, one above the
other, while the rest of the light is filled with grisaille (Plate
XXIII.).
The portrait of a certain abbot as donor enables us to date these nave
windows with fair accuracy as about 1307-8, which makes them slightly
later than the Peter de Dene window in York Minster. The grisaille is,
however, of a distinctly earlier type, having the background still
cross-hatched, but at Chartres one would expect the old traditions to
die hard.
[Sidenote: Fourteenth century glass in Chartres Cathedral.]
There is fourteenth century work in the Cathedral, which is
interesting in its way. The window given, about 1307-10, by "Geoffrey
the Restorer," a canon whose "restoration" of the thirteenth century
windows was of a different kind to that now in vogue, is the work of
an archæologist and an enthusiast for the older style and can hardly
be taken as typical. Very different is the strip of glazing which
Canon Thierry got leave, in 1328, to insert in the foot of one of the
big thirteenth century windows in the south transept to light an altar
he had founded. Even for its date it is remarkable, consisting, as it
does, of figures (Canon Thierry kneeling to the Virgin surrounded by
saints) executed entirely in white and silver stain, without any
coloured glass, placed directly on a background of white and stain
quarries. It is perhaps the first examples of this treatment of
figures, and anything more hopelessly out of keeping with the deep and
solemn colours above it can hardly be imagined, so that it is
difficult to do it justice. An example of _coloured_ figures placed
directly on quarries is the Annunciation, which dates from 1350, in
the south choir aisle, but it is not a very interesting group. The
chapel of St. Piat contains some glass of the latter half of the
century, but the treatment it has received prevents one forming an
opinion of it.
[Sidenote: Evreux.]
The Cathedral of Evreux is rich in remains of fourteenth century
glass, which, like that at York, illustrates the progress of design
during the century, the windows being of all dates from the opening of
the fourteenth century till well on in the fifteenth. The earliest are
those in the choir chapels, some of which are of about the same date
as the Merton College glass, which, indeed, they at once call to mind.
As at Merton, small coloured panels containing figures under low
canopies are made to decorate long lights of grisaille. For the most
part, as at Merton, the figures consist of donors in the outer
lights, kneeling to their patron saints in the inner ones, though
occasionally one finds subjects, such as the part of a Life of St.
Martin in one of the northern chapels. One of the chapels in the apse
is remarkable for the charming use of heraldry in the border. The
windows contain figures of the Count of Evreux kneeling to the Virgin.
His arms are the lilies of France with a bend "componée" of argent and
gules, and the fleur-de-lis and the bend are repeated alternately all
the way up the border, on a ground of blue, with delightful effect.
Later than these is the Harcourt window, the earliest apparently of
those in the clerestory, which must date from between 1310 and 1327,
though I am inclined to think it is nearer the later date. Here again
one has the arrangement, so characteristic of the fourteenth century,
of kneeling donors in the outer lights and their patron saints in the
inner,--the first idea in nearly every fourteenth century window is
the safety of the donor's soul,--but here the coloured panels are
placed at the very bottom of the window, with grisaille above, an
arrangement which one finds again in later work at Rouen. It has the
advantage of bringing the figures nearer the eye, but as a design it
is hardly happy.
[Sidenote: St. Ouen at Rouen.]
The fine church of St. Ouen at Rouen is very rich in fourteenth
century glass of the first half of the century. The oldest, perhaps,
is in the clerestory windows, which afford another example of the
practice found, I think, earlier in France than in England, of placing
figures directly on a background of quarries (Plate XXIV.). From the
small amount of stain used I do not think they are likely to be later
than 1330, though the queer little pedestal with its ogival arch does
not look a very early feature.
Rather later than these are the immense windows in the choir aisles,
of which Plate XXV. is an example. In comparing them to those in York
Minster, they seem to me to come, in point of development, between the
aisle windows of the nave and the west windows, but are far better
than the latter; yet, although there is hardly a detail in them which
cannot be found in an earlier form at Merton College or York, they
have, nevertheless, a character all their own, a hint of growing
divergence between the two schools. The subject of this particular
window is the Life of St. Gervais, but it is such an unimportant
detail in the design as to be hardly worth mentioning, the real
interest of the windows being their planning and ornament. They are
planned on precisely the same system as the windows in Merton College
chapel, in the choir chapels at Evreux, and the aisles of York nave,
but the canopies are more highly developed, the quarries are "true"
quarries, and stain is much more freely used. Plates XXVI.-XXX. show,
in detail, the use that has been made of it in the grisaille borders
and bosses of this window. Even the canopies that are all yellow are,
I fancy, coloured with stain; but the artist has been alive to the
danger of too much yellow in the window, and has made every other
canopy white, merely touched with stain, a form which in time was to
supersede the other altogether. If you compare the little figure from
one of these canopies in Plate XXX. with the little border figures
from Peter de Dene's window at York, you will see how the work is
beginning to lose the mosaic character it had inherited from the
previous centuries. The grisaille patterns, as well as the borders,
show descent from, or at least common origin with, those of York and
Merton--you can find that central stem with a wavy line on it in
both; but there is a subtle difference in the Rouen work--a little
more grace, and more care that the foliage shall not only decorate the
whole space of white, but form a symmetrical pattern on each
individual quarry, a tendency which, however, may also be found in
English work towards the end of the century.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXV
CANOPY, FROM ALL SAINTS', NORTH STREET, YORK
Fifteenth Century]
Of later fourteenth century work there is not very much in France. The
country was devastated by war, and there can have been little money or
heart left for painted windows. Whichever side of the channel the
style of the early fourteenth century originated, it is quite certain
that the next great movement came from England.
FOOTNOTE:
[15] Lasteyrie would have it that the existing windows represent this
glazing,--an extraordinary mistake for him to make,--but it is just
possible that they contain figures from the older windows.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVI
NICHOLAS BLACKBURN AND HIS WIFE, FROM EAST WINDOW OF ALL SAINTS',
NORTH STREET, YORK
Fifteenth Century]
XII
LATE FOURTEENTH CENTURY GLASS IN ENGLAND
(TRANSITIONAL--GLOUCESTER AND THE WORK OF THE WINCHESTER SCHOOL)
An interesting thing about the design of stained glass in the
fourteenth century is that it never stands still, but changes more
rapidly than at any other period in its history. At Gloucester, not
more than from ten to twenty years after the latest of the windows I
have been describing, the great east window of the Cathedral was
filled with glass, which already faintly foreshadows the change into
the style of the succeeding period.
The Severn valley is rich in glass of the fourteenth century, the work
of a school which may have had its headquarters at Gloucester, where,
in later times, at all events, there were important glass-works,
which may still be seen in seventeenth century views of the city.
The fourteenth century glass at Shrewsbury, Tewkesbury, and Wells is
all of this school, and differs in many little ways from the work at
York, among which are the frequency of the ogival arch and gable in
the canopies, and, at Wells, the presence of foliated brackets which
support the figures. Whether the work in Bristol Cathedral also
belongs to it I am not quite prepared to say.
[Sidenote: The east window of Gloucester Cathedral.]
I have no space, however, to describe these windows, and must return
to the east window of Gloucester Cathedral which is later in style
than any of them. Winston, who has given it the same careful study
that he had devoted to the Peter de Dene window at York, points out
that the coats of arms in it are all those of nobles who took part in
the Campaign of Crècy in 1346 and deduces that the date of the window
is not later than 1350, whereas Westlake thinks it cannot be earlier
than 1360. In either case it is remarkable. To begin with, the tracery
of this immense window, the second largest in England, is pure
Perpendicular, and the earliest important example of it. The glass, on
the other hand, in its architectural detail, style of drawing, and
material used, belongs almost wholly to the Second or Decorated
Period, and it is mainly in its planning and general colour scheme
that we find a hint of approaching change. The perpendicular mullions
and horizontal transoms divide the great window, which is slightly
bowed outwards to give its strength, into a series of horizontal rows
of narrow lights one above the other, fourteen lights in a row, each
light being about two feet wide and from six to nine feet high. The
lower tiers (and originally this was true of the tracery as well) are
filled with quarries, and the upper one of these, the first that
extends all across the window,--for the entrance to the Lady Chapel
makes a gap below it,--is decorated with the splendid row of coats of
arms already mentioned. Above this each light, row upon row, contains
a figure under a canopy, the side shafts of which extend into the
light above and support the canopy there, while the central pinnacle
also extends upwards past the transom and expands into a flat-topped
pedestal which carries the figure above. Figure and canopy are white,
their whiteness only emphasised by touches of yellow stain, and
relieved against a coloured background. The background of the two
central columns of lights is ruby, that of the column on each side
blue, and the next ruby again and so on alternately. Thus the general
effect is of a white pattern on a background that is striped
vertically with alternate red and blue. It is this simple but
effective colour scheme that gives the window its resemblance in
effect to Perpendicular glass; but there are other features--the
complete absence of borders, the pedestals that carry the figures
(which are first found at Wells), and the decoration of the
quarries--which all indicate the coming change. The quarries, where
the original ones remain, still have the "trellis" pattern, but
instead of the continuous flowing pattern of foliage running through
them each quarry has a sort of star pattern in the middle of it,
stained yellow, a design much more common in the fifteenth than in the
fourteenth century. This placing of quarries at the foot of the
windows and in the tracery has its origin, of course, in the old
fourteenth century arrangement of a horizontal stripe or stripes of
figure and canopy work on a ground of grisaille.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVII
PRIEST, FROM "ACTS OF MERCY" WINDOW, ALL SAINTS', NORTH STREET, YORK
Fifteenth Century]