SIXTEENTH CENTURY WINDOWS.
The customary line between Gothic and Renaissance glass is drawn at
about A.D. 1530. That is to say, that there are to be found examples,
presumably of that date, which are still undoubtedly Gothic in
character. But he would be a bold man, even for an archæologist, who
dared to say precisely when the Gothic era came to an end.
Quite early in the sixteenth century the new Italian movement began to
make itself felt in France, Germany, Flanders; in due course it spread
to this country. Eventually it supplanted the older style; but it was
only by degrees that it insinuated itself into the affections of
cis-alpine craftsmen. And in stained glass, even more plainly than in
wood or stone carving, is seen how gradually the new style was
assimilated by the mediæval craftsmen--more quickly, of course, by the
younger generation than the older--so that, concurrently with design in
the quasi-Italian manner, Gothic work was still being done. Much of the
earlier Renaissance work shows lingering Gothic influence. In the first
quarter of the sixteenth century a great deal of glass was designed and
executed by men hesitating between the old love and the new, only
partially emancipated from mediæval tradition, or only imperfectly
versed in the foreign style.
There is a window at S. Nizier, at Troyes, for example, in which the
details are Renaissance, but the feeling is quite Gothic. The subjects
are even explained by elaborate yellow scrolls or labels inscribed in
black, very much after the manner of those which form such a feature in
the German Gothic work at Shrewsbury (page 186). Renaissance forms are
traced with a hand which betrays long training in the more rigid
mediæval school; and Gothic and Italian details are put together in the
same composition with a _naïveté_ which is sometimes quite charming.
You can see that the designer of the window on page 203 was not
untouched by Renaissance influence. Possibly he thought the hybrid
ornament in his canopy was quite up to date.
In the glass in the nave of Cologne Cathedral the suspicion aroused by
the side columns of the otherwise quite Gothic canopy on page 191 is
confirmed by definitely Renaissance forms in the ornament in the window
head. Again, at the Church of S. Peter, at Cologne, is a sort of pointed
canopy with ornament which looks at first like Gothic crockets, but on
nearer view it is just Italian arabesque in white and stain. Apart from
architectural accessories and detail of costume or ornament, to justify
the attribution of the work to this or that period, it is very often
difficult to give a name to early Renaissance work; the only safe refuge
is in the convenient word transitional.
But for the nimbus in perspective, and the shield of arms and its little
amorino supporter, it would have seemed safe to describe the "Charge to
S. Peter" from S. Vincent at Rouen on page 207 as "Gothic."
In French glass a lingering Gothic element is noticeable at a period
when Italian forms had firmly established themselves in contemporary
plastic art; but, then, glass painting was not an Italian art; and,
whilst wood carvers and sculptors were imported from Italy, and directly
influenced the Frenchmen working with them, glass painting remained in
the hands of native artists.
Before very long the Renaissance did, of course, assert itself, in glass
painting as in all art, and we arrive at windows absolutely different
from anything that was done in the Middle Ages. The change was in some
places much more rapid than in others. Wherever there was a strong man
his influence would make for or against it. But meanwhile much
intermediate work was done, belonging more or less to the new school,
whilst retaining very much of the character of Gothic glass.
That Gothic character was something well worth keeping; for it is the
character which belongs inherently to the material.
The Gothic glass painters did, in fact, so thoroughly develop the
resources of the material, that a Renaissance window treated really like
glass inevitably suggests the lingering of Gothic tradition. This is no
slight praise of Gothic work; and, by implication, it tells against the
later Renaissance glass painters, whose triumphs were in a direction
somewhat apart from their craft. The great windows at Brussels, for
example (page 71), illustrate a new departure. They seem to have nothing
in common with mediæval art. On the other hand, one traces the descent
of such masterpieces of translucent glass painting as are to be found at
Arezzo (page 397), through those same intermediate efforts, directly to
Gothic sources.
[Illustration: 152. ST. MARY'S, SHREWSBURY.]
To trace the steps by which the new encroached upon the old, as one may
do, for example, at Rouen, is almost to come to the conclusion that the
short but brilliant period of Renaissance glass painting is really the
after-fruit of Gothic tradition, fertilised only by the great flood of
Renaissance feeling which swept over sixteenth century art. Nowhere is
this more clearly argued than in the windows at Auch, completed,
according to all accounts, as early as 1513. A strain of Gothic is
betrayed by the cusping which here and there fringes a semicircular
canopy arch; but no less mistakably mediæval is the technique
throughout, and equally so the setting out of the windows. For the
somewhat imposing canopies are not, for once, devised as frames to
correspondingly important pictures; but are simply shrines adorned with
figures each confined to its separate light: it is only the small
subsidiary predella or other such pictures which extend beyond the
mullions. No doubt there is doctrinal intention in the juxtaposition of
Prophets, Sibyls, and the rest--one of whom may even be supposed to be
addressing the other--but to all intents and purposes decorative, they
are just a row of standing figures, as distinct one from the other as
the usual series of figures under quite separate canopies. It is only
the canopy which connects them. This kind of composition (which is seen
again at Troyes, page 200) would never have occurred to a man altogether
cut off from Gothic tradition.
[Illustration: 153. CHAPEL OF THE BOURBONS, LYONS.]
[Illustration: 154. S. GODARD, ROUEN.]
It is worth remarking that, even when Gothic and Renaissance canopies
alternate at Auch in a single window, or where Gothic niches are built,
as it were, into or on to larger Renaissance structures, there is no
appearance of incongruity. Truth to tell, the Gothic is not so purely
Gothic, nor the Renaissance so purely Renaissance, as that they should
clash one with the other. Both are seen through the temperament of the
artist. He mixed them in his mind; and the result is quite one, _his_
style in short.
Early Renaissance glass submitted itself, one can hardly say duly, but
almost as readily as late Gothic design, to the restraint of Gothic
mullions. The windows in which, as it happens, some of the best Early
French Renaissance work is found (and it is in France that the best is
to be found) are often smaller than the great Perpendicular windows
referred to, and do not lend themselves to such elaborate subdivision.
But the lines on which they are subdivided are very much as heretofore.
The canopy still extends through several lights, and covers a single
subject. Only now it is Renaissance in design. That does not mean to say
merely that round arched architecture takes the place of pointed. The
round arch occurs indeed, as in the windows in the Chapel of the
Bourbons, in Lyons Cathedral (on pages 204 and 349), supplemented by
amorini and festoons of fruit. But more often the canopy takes the form
of a frieze of Renaissance ornament, painted in white and stain, as at
S. Godard, Rouen (opposite), or glazed in white on colour, as in the
cathedral of the same city (pages 75, 350), supported at each end by a
pilaster. Not seldom it resolves itself into arabesque only very
remotely connected with architecture at all. Indeed, if it simulate
anything, it is goldsmith's work rather than masonry. Executed, as at
Rouen (pages 75, 206), in brilliant yellow on a dark coloured ground, it
has very much the appearance and value of beaten gold. That, rather than
sculpture, must have been in the mind of the designer. One form of
imitation is not much better than another; but here, at all events,
there is nothing which in the least competes with the surrounding
architecture; and it will scarcely be denied by any one who takes the
least interest in ornament, that design of this kind is vastly more
amusing than the dull array of misplaced pinnacles which often did duty
for ornamental detail in Gothic shrinework. A German version of a canopy
which ceases almost to be a canopy and becomes more like arabesque, is
given on page 350. That is supported by columns (the caps are shown in
the illustration) rather out of keeping with the ornament they support,
which makes very little pretence of being architectural. The canopies on
pages 204, 350, are supported only on little brackets at each side, and
have no shafts at all. This marks a new departure. The picture has now
no frame at its sides, only the stone mullion.
[Illustration: 155. S. PATRICE, ROUEN.]
[Illustration: 156. SUBJECT, S. VINCENT, ROUEN, 1525.]
It was explained, in reference to glazing, what confusion of detail
resulted from the use of leads of which some were intended to form part
of the design and some not. Similar confusion is inevitable when certain
of the mullions are meant to be accepted as frame to the picture and
others to be ignored. The perhaps not very conspicuous canopy is often
the only hint as to which of the stone divisions you are to accept as
such, and which not. Even that was not always there to serve as a guide.
Already, as early as 1525, the date given to the window illustrating
the life of S. Peter (page 207), the canopy was sometimes annulled, and
the window given over entirely to picture, either one complete subject
or a series of smaller ones. The window dedicated to S. Peter contains
in its four lights eight equal subjects, a plan adopted in several
others of the windows at S. Vincent, Rouen. In a series of unframed
subjects, such as these, there is much less danger of confusion should
some one prominent figure recur throughout always in the same costume.
That is the case here, and again at Châlons, where the figure of Our
Lord, robed in purple, is conspicuous throughout: the mind grasps at a
glance that this is not one picture but a series.
A change of period is indicated by the departure from the disc-shaped
nimbus. On pages 207, 210, 234, 397, the nimbus is shown in perspective;
an attempt is even made to make it hover above the head, an effect not
possible to produce in leaded glass; even at Arezzo it is not achieved.
Neither is the use of a mere ring of light, whether in flat or in
perspective, a happy substitution for the Gothic colour disc, as may be
seen, for example, at Cologne. The idea of the nimbus only keeps within
the border line which separates the sublime from the ridiculous, so long
as the thing is frankly accepted as a symbol, not as an effect. But,
were it otherwise, the use of the strongly marked disc of colour about
the head of prominent personages has an enormous value as a means of
distinguishing them from the background or from surrounding figures. Its
decorative importance is no less than its symbolic. Very especially is
this so in glass; and the glass painter who wantonly departs from its
use, reduces it to a mere ring (which does not separate it at all from
the background) or poises it in the air, is beginning to wander from the
way, narrow if you please, which leads to success in glass. This is said
with some reluctance in face of the all but perfect little panel from S.
Bonnet, at Bourges, on page 210. It is true that there the nimbus of the
boy saint, though in perspective, does by its dark tone separate the
head from the light ground, as the face is separated from the darker
drapery of his teacher; and, in so far, little of definition is
sacrificed; but, after all, admirably as the design is schemed, the oval
nimbus is not a whit less conventional than the round disc of mediæval
times, and it does lack something of distinction and dignity which that
conveyed. The date inscribed (1544) serves to remind us that we are
nearing the middle of the century, at which period glass painting may
safely be said to have reached its zenith and to be nearing the verge of
decline.
It will have been seen in the examples lately instanced how story is
gradually more and more naturally set forth in glass. There is now no
vestige of flat treatment left. Even the standing figure (page 191)
stands forth from his niche, and though he may be backed by a curtain of
damask, there is shown above that a background of receding architecture.
So in the S. Bernard windows at Shrewsbury (pages 56, 203) there is
architectural distance shown in perspective, and again in the subjects
from Fairford, whether it be the portcullised gate of Jerusalem that is
represented (page 251), or the very inadequate palace of King Solomon
(page 188), or the Garden of Eden, in which the scene of the Temptation
is primitively pourtrayed (page 372), there is some attempt to render
the scene. Even in the fifteenth century work at Troyes (page 194) the
Prodigal is not merely shown among the swine, joining them in a dinner
of gigantic acorns, but he leans against an oak tree, and in the
distance is a little forest of trees. In Renaissance glass the scene is
much more naturally rendered, and forms almost invariably an important
part of the composition. Witness the palace of Herod (page 74) when
Salome dances before him, which is a great advance upon the Gothic
throne-room of King Solomon (page 188).
[Illustration: 157. SUBJECT, S. BONNET, BOURGES.]
The scene takes one of three forms: either it is architectural, or it is
landscape, or it is of architecture and landscape combined. A very
favourite plan of the French was to show distant architecture (glazed in
deep purple) through which were seen glimpses of grey sky, and perhaps a
peep of landscape; and it resulted invariably in a beautiful effect of
colour. In fact, a scheme of colour which recurs again and again at
Rouen, and in other French glass of the first part of the sixteenth
century, consists in the introduction of figures in rich colour and
white upon a background where white, green, purple, and pale blue
predominate to such an extent as to give quite a distinctive character
to the glass. The more distant landscape was painted very delicately
upon the pale grey-blue glass which served for sky, as shown on page
255, and in the same way architecture was also painted upon it. In the
view through the arches above the screen in a window at Montmorency
(page 213), both trees and buildings are represented in that way upon
pale grey glass, the green of the trees and hills stained upon it.
Sometimes the distance is painted upon white, as at King's College,
Cambridge; but in France the pale grey-blue background is so usual as to
be quite characteristic of the period. All this is a long way from the
mere diaper of clouds which in the early fifteenth century sometimes
took the place of damask pattern upon the blue which formed a background
to the Crucifixion, or other scene out of doors. It is now no longer a
case of symbolising, but of representing, the sky, and it is wonderful
what atmospheric quality is obtained by the judicious use of pale blue
painted with the requisite delicacy. The beauty of this kind of work,
especially on a small scale, is beyond dispute. Together with the
rendering of the flesh, it implies consummate skill in painting. The
painter comes quite to the front; but he justifies himself inasmuch as
he is able to hold the place. He does what his Gothic predecessors could
not have done, and does it perfectly. Could the Gothic artist have
painted like this, he also might have been tempted so far in the
pictorial direction as to have sacrificed some of the sterner qualities
of his design.
The architectural environment of the figures on page 213 fulfils
somewhat the function of the Perpendicular canopy; it forms a kind of
setting of white for the colour; but, in the first place, it does not
pretend to frame them at the side, and, in the second, the attempt at
actual perspective necessitates an amount of shading upon the white
glass which detracts at once from its purity and from its value as
setting to the colour. The idea is there that you see through the window
into space; and, though that effect is never obtained, it is wonderful
how far some of the glass painters later in the century went towards
illusion. A certain false air of truth was sometimes given to the
would-be deception by an acknowledgment of the window-shape--that is, by
making the foremost arch or arches follow the shape of the window head,
and form, as it were, a canopy losing itself in perspective.
Architecture proper to the subject, or not too inappropriate to it, is
sometimes schemed so far to accommodate itself to the window-shape as to
form, with the white pavement, a more or less canopy-like setting for
the figures. It may be a sort of proscenium, the sides of which recede
into the picture, and form what may be called the scenery. At King's
College, Cambridge, Esau is seen bargaining away his birthright at a
table where stands the coveted pottage, in the midst of spacious halls
going back into distant vistas, seen through a sort of canopy next the
actual stonework. That concession to the framework of the window does
mend matters somewhat. The base of the picture opposite, for example, is
much more satisfactory than it would have been had it not acknowledged
the window-sill; but the architecture in the top part of the lights is
not a frame to the picture at all, nor yet a finish to the glass: it is
part of the picture, which thus, you may say, occupies the window as a
picture its canvas. In reality that is not quite so. There is some
acknowledgment, though inadequate, of the spring of the arch by a
horizontal cornice parallel with the bar; and the arcading, though
interrupted by the mullion and by the marble columns, steadies the
design; and altogether the architecture is planned with ingenuity,
though without frank enough acceptance of the window-shape. One would be
more tolerant to such misguided freedom of design were it not for the
kind of thing it led to. It must be admitted that both French and
Flemings, until they began to force their perspective, and to paint
shadow heavily, did very beautiful and effective work in this way.
A multitude of figures, as, for example, in the Judgment of Solomon at
S. Gervais, Paris, more or less in rich colour, could be held together
by distant architecture and foreground pavement largely consisting of
white glass, in a way which left little to be desired, except fuller
acknowledgment of the stonework. But it took a master of design to do
it, and one with a fine sense of breadth and architectural fitness.
When such architecture was kept so light as to have the full value of
white, and when the figures against it were also to a large extent in
white, and the colour was introduced only in little patches and jewels
skilfully designed to form, here the sleeves of a white-robed figure,
there a headdress, there again the glimpse of an underskirt, and so
on--all ingeniously designed for the express purpose of introducing rich
colour, the whole shot through with golden stain--the effect is
sometimes very beautiful.
[Illustration: 158. SAINTS, CH. OF S. MARTIN, MONTMORENCY.]
Admirable Flemish work, Renaissance in detail, but carrying on the
traditions of Gothic art, is to be found in plenty at Liège, both in
the cathedral (1530 to 1557) and at S. Martin. This is excellent in
drawing and composition, most highly finished in painting, fine in
colour, and silvery as to its white glass, which last is splendidly
stained. In the same city there is beautiful work also at S. Jacques,
with admirable treatment of the canopy on a large scale. It differs from
French work inasmuch as it is Flemish, just as the glass at the church
of Brou differs in that there is a characteristic Burgundian flavour
about it; but those are details of locality, which do not especially
affect the course of glass painting, and which it would be out of place
here to discuss.
In England we are not rich in Renaissance glass. The best we have is
Flemish, from Herkenrode, now in the cathedral at Lichfield. The greater
part of this is collected in seven windows of the Lady Chapel--no need
to explain which; the miserable shields of arms in the remaining two
convict themselves of modernity. In the tracery, too, there is some old
glass, but it is lost in the glare of new glazing adjacent. Otherwise
this glass is not much hurt by restoration. Four of the windows are
treated much alike; that is, they have each three subjects, extending
each across the three lights of which they are composed, some with
enclosing canopy, and some without. A fifth three-light window is broken
up into six tiers of subjects, each of which appears at first sight as
if it were confined to the limits of a single light, but there is in
fact connection between the figures; for example, of three figures the
central one proves to be the Patron Saint of the Donor, himself
occupying one of the sidelights, and his wife the other. If the Saint is
seated the Donors stand. If he is represented standing they kneel before
him. The two larger six-light windows at Lichfield are divided each into
four; that is to say, the four quarters of the window have each a
separate subject which extends laterally through three lights, and in
depth occupies with its canopy about half the entire height of the
window.
The Lichfield glass has very much the character of that at Liège. So has
the Flemish glass now at the east end of S. George's, Hanover Square, a
church famous for its fashionable weddings. This is some of the best
glass in London, well worthy the attention of the guests pending the
arrival of the bride. The design, however, is calculated to mystify the
student, until he becomes aware that the lights form part of a "Tree of
Jesse," adapted, not very intelligently, to their present position, and
marred by hideous restoration, such as the patch of excruciating blue in
the robe of the Virgin. The vine, executed in stain upon white, with
grapes in pot-metal purples, is not nearly strong enough to support the
figures; this may be in part due to the decay of the paint, which has
proceeded apace.
Again, at Chantilly (page 218) may be seen how lead lines quarrel with
delicate painting. The more delicate the painting, the greater the
danger of that--a danger seldom altogether overcome.
[Illustration: 159. S. GEORGE'S, HANOVER SQUARE, LONDON.]
The most important series of Renaissance windows in this country is in
King's College Chapel, Cambridge. "Indentures" still remain to tell us
that these were contracted for in 1516 and 1526. Apart from some
strikingly English-looking figures in white and stain upon quarry
backgrounds in a side chapel, and other remains of similar character,
and from a very beautiful window almost opposite the door by which one
enters--differing in type, in scale, in colour, altogether from the
other windows--the glass throughout the huge chapel was obviously
planned at the time of the first contract, and there is a certain
symmetry of arrangement throughout which bespeaks the period of
transition. The windows consist each of two tiers of five lights. A
five-light window offers some difficulty to the designer if he desire
(as in the sixteenth century he naturally did) to introduce subjects
extending across more than one light. A subject in two lights does not
symmetrically balance with a subject in three. He might carry his
subject right across the window, but that might give him very likely a
larger space to fill than he wanted; and besides, the time was hardly
come for him to think of that. He might carry it across the central
group of three; but that would leave him a single light on each side to
dispose of. Remains the idea of a subject in two lights at each side of
the window, and a central composition occupying only one light. That was
not a very usual plan, although it was adopted, at Fairford for example,
where the side subjects in two lights under a canopy are effectually
separated by a central subject which has none. At King's the sidelights
have no canopies further than such as may be accepted as part of the
architecture proper to the subject, schemed more or less to frame the
picture (as in the case of the window at Montmorency, page 213); it is
only in the centre lights that the figures (two in each light, one above
the other) are enclosed in canopy work. These figures (described as
"messengers"), with elaborately flowing scrolls about them inscribed
with texts of Scripture, are many of them quite Gothic in character,
even though they have Renaissance canopies over them. The designs of
these mostly do duty many times over, as if this merely decorative or
descriptive work were not of much account; and the same figure occurs,
here well painted, there ill done, or painted perhaps in a late, loose
way, quite out of keeping with the drawing: there is no sort of sequence
in them. The notion of these intermediate figures, at once
distinguishing the subjects one from the other, and throwing light upon
their meaning, is good. But in effect it fails of its object, thanks to
the independent spirit of the later painters, who thought more of their
pictures than of architectural restraint.
The subjects on each side of the window are very large in scale, very
pictorially and very freely treated, very finely designed at times, and
very splendid in effect; but they are most unequal, and they are all
more or less of a tangle. Their confusion is the greater inasmuch as
there is no attempt to balance one picture with another. A landscape
background on one side of the window answers to an architectural
background on the other. On one side the interest of the subject is
towards the top of the lights, on the other to the bottom, and so on.
Either subject or both may be so merged with the "messengers" that a
casual observer would hardly be aware of the existence of such
personages.
[Illustration: 160. THE STORY OF PSYCHE, CHANTILLY.]
All this makes it difficult to trace the subject; and yet the windows
are in a certain pictorial way the more effective. In fact the unity of
the _window_ has been preserved: the white landscape on one side, and
the white architecture on the other, make equally a setting for the
colour, and form, with the "messengers" and their little canopies, _one_
framing, not several frames. Right or wrong, the artist has done what he
meant to do, and done it oftentimes very cleverly, though not with
uniform success. The inequality spoken of is not only in workmanship but
in design. Some of these pictures have characteristics, such as the
needless evasion of leading, which one associates rather with quite
the end of the century than with anything like the date of the second
contract: possibly the execution of the work extended over a longer
period of time than is generally supposed. However that may be, the
windows generally, remarkable as they are, are not markedly enough of a
period to serve as an object lesson in glass design. They are neither
quite late enough to illustrate the decline of art, nor workmanlike
enough to show the culmination of sixteenth century design--painter-like
and pictorial, but in which the designer knew how to make the most of
the glass in which it was to be wrought.
That is best seen in some of the French and Flemish work above referred
to, in the work, for example, at Ecouen and Montmorency, so fully
illustrated in Monsieur Magne's most admirable monograph. The figure,
for example, of William of Montmorency (page 66), the father of the
great Anne, might serve for a votive picture of the period; but it is
designed, nevertheless, as only a man careful of the conditions under
which glass painting was done could design. Careful of conditions! That
is just what the designers of the King's College glass were not, or not
enough. And so begins the end.