EARLY GRISAILLE.
With grisaille glass begins a new chapter in the history of glass
painting, and a most important one--not only because of the beautiful
work which was done from the first in white, but also because coloured
glass grew, so to speak, always towards the light.
[Illustration: 85. S. SERGE, ANGERS.]
The first coloured windows were intense in colour, rich, and even heavy.
The note they struck was deep, solemn, suited to the church and to the
times. Neither priest nor parishioner was afraid to sacrifice a certain
amount of light. It was the business of a window to shut in those that
worshipped from the outer world, and wrap them in mysterious and
beautiful gloom. With other days, however, came other ideals. As time
went on, and men emerged from the dark ages, the problem of the glazier
was how more and more to lighten his glass; until at last white glass
predominated, and the question was how to introduce colour into it.
Meanwhile the thirteenth century glaziers resorted, where they wanted
light, to the use of windows in grisaille, in absolute contrast to the
rich picture-glass in the same church.
The model for grisaille design was readily found in the earlier pattern
work in plain glazing.
[Illustration: 86. S. SERGE, ANGERS.]
[Illustration: 87. S. JEAN-AUX-BOIS.]
This last never quite went out of use. But already in the thirteenth
century, and probably in the twelfth, it began to be supplemented, for
the most part, by painting. The exceptionally graceful work at S. Serge,
Angers, for example, on this page and the last, is probably not very
much later than the year 1200. You can see at a glance how this is only
a carrying further of the unpainted work in the same church (page 27)
attributed to the thirteenth century. There may be found indeed amidst
the plain glazing scraps of painted work; but they never happen to fit,
and have pretty certainly found their way into the window in course of
repairs. The unpainted window seems to be of greener and more silvery
glass than the painted, to which perhaps the cross-hatching gives a
rather horny look.
The one way of painting grisaille in the thirteenth century was to trace
the design (which of course followed the traditional lines) boldly upon
the white glass, and then to cross-hatch the ground, more or less
delicately according to the scale of the work and its distance from the
eye, as here shown. By this means the pattern was made to stand out
clear and light against the background, which had now the value of a
tint, only a much more brilliant one than could have been got by a film
or wash of colour. Very occasionally a feature, such as the group of
four crowns which form the centre of the circle, above, might be
emphasised by filling in the ground about them in solid pigment; but
that was never done to any large extent. The rule was always to
cross-hatch the ground.
[Illustration: 88. S. JEAN-AUX-BOIS.]
[Illustration: 89. SOISSONS.]
With the introduction of colour into grisaille comes always the question
as to how much or how little of it there shall be. There is a good deal
of Early French work, which, on the face of it, was designed first as a
sort of strapwork of interlacing bands in plain glazing, and then
further enriched with painted work, not growing from it, except by way
of exception. This is seen in the example here given. The painter
indulged in slight modifications of detail as he went on. He had a model
which he copied more or less throughout the window; but he allowed
himself the liberty of playing variations, and he even departed from it
at times. By this means he adapted himself to the glass, which did not
always take just the same lines, and at the same time he amused himself,
and us, more than if he had multiplied one pattern with monotonous
precision. His painting was strong enough to keep the leads in
countenance; that is to say, his main outlines would be as thick (see
opposite) as lead lines.
[Illustration: 90. EARLY DETAIL.]
Patterns such as those on pages 138, 139, and below, from Soissons,
Reims, S. Jean-aux-Bois, would make good glazed windows apart from the
painting on them. Indeed, the painting is there comparatively
insignificant in design. In the Soissons work, in particular, it
consists of little more than cross-hatching upon the background, to
throw up the interlacing of the glazed bands; for, with the exception of
just a touch of colour in the one opposite, these designs are executed
entirely in white glass. The geometric glazing shapes so completely
convey the design, that the painted detail might almost be an
after-thought.
[Illustration: 91. SOISSONS.]
[Illustration: 92. REIMS.]
[Illustration: 93. LINCOLN.]
[Illustration: 94. WATER PERRY, OXON.]
In much of the earliest grisaille there is absolutely no colour but the
greenish hue belonging to what we are agreed to call white glass, and
the effect of it is invariably so satisfactory as to show that colour is
by no means indispensable. And, at all events in France, the colour was
at first very sparingly used, except in those twelfth century patterns
(pages 35, 118, 120) which cannot fairly be called grisaille. In the
window on page 137 the colour is, practically speaking, enclosed in
small spaces ingeniously contrived between the interlacing bands of
white; in that on page 138 it is introduced in half rings, which form
part of the marginal line, and in spots or jewels; but in either case
there is little of it, and it is most judiciously introduced. The
interlacing of bands of plain white upon a ground of cross-hatching,
itself enriched with scrollwork clear upon it, is characteristically
French. Similar bands of white occur, though not interlacing, in the
comparatively clumsy panel from Lincoln (above), but the more usual
English way was to make the bands of white broader, and to paint a
pattern upon them, as in the lancet from Water Perry, Oxfordshire
(opposite), or in the much more satisfactory light from Lincoln
(overleaf), leaving only a margin of clear glass next the cross-hatched
background. A similar kind of thing occurs in the church of S. Pierre at
Chartres (below). A yet more usual plan with us was to make the
strapwork in colour, as at Salisbury. In the patterns on this page the
straps do not interlace. In that on page 143 they not only interlace one
with the other, but the painted ornament, which now takes the form of
more elaborate scrollwork than heretofore, is intertwined with them.
This is an extremely good example of Early English grisaille. Altogether
Salisbury Cathedral is rich in white glass windows of this period (pages
143, 148, 329, 332).
[Illustration: 95. LINCOLN.]
[Illustration: 96. S. PIERRE, CHARTRES.]
The grisaille in the clerestory at Bourges is similar to the Salisbury
work, but it is not possible to get near enough to it to make careful
comparison. The scrollwork on page 143 may be profitably compared with
the very unusual white window at S. Jean-aux-Bois (overleaf). There the
design consists altogether of scrolls in white upon a cross-hatched
ground. It is as if the designer had set out to glaze up a pattern in
white upon a white ground, cross-hatched. But it is obvious that, as
there is no change of colour, it was no longer necessary always to
cut the ornament out of a separate piece of glass from the ground. We
find consequently that, wherever it is convenient, a painted line is
used to save leading. That, it has been already explained (page 24), was
a practice from the first; and it was resorted to more and more. It came
in very conveniently in the French windows, in which the design
consisted largely of white strapwork. It was adopted in the example from
Châlons here given, though it does not appear in the sketch, any more
than it does in the glass until you examine it very carefully. However,
in the sketches from the great clerestory window from Reims Cathedral
(overleaf), and in the smaller one from S. Jean-aux-Bois (facing it),
the economy of glazing is easy to perceive; whilst in that from
Coutances (page 147) the glazier is already so sparing of his leads that
they no longer always follow or define the main lines of the pattern.
[Illustration: 97. GRISAILLE, SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.]
[Illustration: 98. CHÂLONS.]
In a remarkable window in the choir of Chartres Cathedral (page 150) the
design includes interlacing bands both of white and colour, the coloured
ones flanked with strips of white; but the white bands are not glazed
separately. They are throughout included in the same piece of glass as
the cross-hatching, which defines them. This ingenious and very graceful
pattern window is still of the thirteenth century, though clearly of
much later date than, for example, the windows of S. Jean-aux-Bois,
which might indeed almost belong to the twelfth.
[Illustration: 99. CLERESTORY, REIMS.]
In several of the Salisbury windows (pages 148, 386) thin straps of
colour are bounded on the outer side by broader bands of white painted
with pattern. And here it should be noticed the bands no longer
interlace at all; on the contrary, the ornamental forms are superposed
one upon the other. This is very markedly the case on page 148. In the
centre of the light is a series of circular discs, and at the sides of
these a row of zig-zags, which, as it were, disappear behind them,
whilst at the edges of the window, again, is an array of segments of
smaller circles losing themselves behind these. In such cases, it will
be seen, the broad white bands fulfil the very useful purpose of keeping
the coloured lines apart, and separating one series of shapes from the
other. In this window, as in the narrow light on page 386, where the
vesica shape is occupied once more with flowing scrollwork, and as in
all but one of the windows on that page, the background of
cross-hatching is for the first time omitted, and the pencilled pattern
is by so much the less effective. As a rule, patterns traced in mere
outline like this belong to a later date; but these windows are
certainly of the thirteenth century. It is seldom safe to say that this
or that practice belonged exclusively to any one period. The white glass
on page 335, almost entirely without paint, might have been executed in
the twelfth century, but its border indicates more likely the latter
part of the thirteenth. Quite the simplest form of glazing was to lead
the glass together in squares or diamonds. These "quarries," as they are
called (from the French _carré_) are associated sometimes with rosettes
and bands of other pattern work, as at Lincoln (pages 284, 287); but
more ordinarily the ornamental part of the window is made up entirely of
them. "Quarry" is a term to be remembered. It plays in the next century
an important part in the design of windows.
[Illustration: 100. S. JEAN-AUX-BOIS.]
The best-known grisaille windows in England are the famous group of long
lancets, ending the north transept of York Minster, which are known by
the name of the Five Sisters. You remember the legend about them. The
"inimitable Boz" relates it at length in "Nicholas Nickleby"; but it is
nonsense, all the same. The story tells how in the reign of Henry the
Fourth five maiden ladies worked the designs in embroidery, and sent
them abroad to be carried out in glass. But, as it happens, they belong
to the latter part of the thirteenth century; they are unmistakably
English work; and, what is more, no woman, maiden, wife, or widow, ever
had, or could have had, a hand in their design. Their authorship is
written on the face of them. Every line in their composition shows them
to be the work of a strong man, and a practical glazier, who worked
according to the traditions that had come down to him. A designer
recognises in it a man who knew his trade, and knew it thoroughly. The
notion that any glazier ever worked from an embroidered design is too
absurd. As well might the needlewoman go to the glazier to design her
stitchery. But such is the popular ignorance of workmanship, and of its
intimate connection with design, that no doubt the vergers will go on
repeating their apocryphal tale as long as vergers continue to fill the
office of personal conductors.
[Illustration: 101. COUTANCES.]
The Five Sisters are rather looser and freer in design than the
Salisbury glass, and have broad borders of white. In detail they are
certainly not superior to that, nor in general design, so far as one can
make it out at all; but, from their very size and position, they produce
a much more imposing effect. Whoever is not impressed by the Five
Sisters is not likely ever to be moved by grisaille. They form one huge
fivefold screen of silvery glass. The patterns are only with great
difficulty to be deciphered. It is with these as with many others of the
most fascinating windows in grisaille; the glass is corroded on the
surface, black with the dirt and lichen of ages, cracked and crossed
with leads introduced by the repairing glazier, until the design is
about as intelligible as would be a conglomeration of huge spiders'
webs. But, for all that, nay, partly because of it, it is a thing of
absolute beauty, as beautiful as a spider's web, beaded with
dewdrops, glistening in the sun on a frosty winter's morning. It is a
dream of silvery light: who cares for details of design? But it is all
this, because it was designed, because it was planned by a glazier for
glazing, and has all that gives glass its charm.
[Illustration: 102. GRISAILLE, SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.]
[Illustration: 103. CHARTRES CATHEDRAL.]
Stained glass, like the men who design it, has always the defects of its
qualities. It is the first business of those who work in it to see that
it has at least the qualities of its defects.