LATER RENAISSANCE WINDOWS.
The magnificent windows of Van Orley at S. Gudule, Brussels, mark in a
sense the summit of design, as well as of painting, in stained glass.
But it is design of a kind not strictly proper to the material, for
which reason the discussion of his work, though it was done well within
the first half of the sixteenth century, has been reserved by way of
introduction to the period which it inaugurated, the period when the
glass painter not merely put painting first of all, but sacrificed to it
qualities peculiar to glass.
The heavy painting of this work and much that followed it has already
been discussed. But something of that was perhaps implied in the very
ideal of the painter; the execution only follows out the scheme of the
design. The scope as well as the power of the designer is better
illustrated in the two great transept windows, than in those of the
chapel of the Holy Sacrament. Even in the very inadequate rendering of
the one of them on page 71 may be seen how large and dignified the man's
conception was. The effect is gorgeous; but it is produced as simply,
for all the unsurpassed elaboration of ornamental detail, as a Goth
could wish. An unsophisticated designer of the thirteenth century could
scarcely have gone more directly to work. He would not have grouped his
figures with such art, but he would have separated each from the other
and from the ground in much such a straightforward way. Yet the _motif_
of the design, the idea of making figures and architecture stand as it
were in strong and round relief against the light, went far to bring
about excessive use of paint; and the design is therefore in a measure
at fault, as was the later Netherlandish work, founded upon it, of which
it may be taken as the nobler type.
It is a far cry from the slender Perpendicular canopy to this triumphal
arch. The architecture is here no frame to the picture, but the backbone
of the picture itself, and it is disposed in the most masterly way. It
takes the place of a magnificent high altar. Sometimes in compositions
of this kind the altar-like canopy enshrines a rich picture, just as
veritable stonework might frame a painted altar-piece, whilst in the
foreground kneel the Donors. In this case Charles the Fifth and his wife
Isabella and their attendant saints are the picture, the object of their
adoration, the Almighty, being relegated to one of the side arches.
Similarly in a three-light window (of much more glassy character,
however) at Montmorency, Guy de Laval has the central position, and the
crucifix before which he kneels is put on one side. This is rather
characteristic of the period. In the sixteenth century windows were
erected, not so much to the glory of God, as to the glorification of the
Donor, who claimed a foremost, if not the very central, place for
himself.
The donor was no doubt always, as to this day, an important person in
connection with the putting up of a stained glass window. But in early
days he was content to efface himself, or if he appeared upon the scene
at all it was in miniature, modestly presenting the little image of his
gift in a lower corner of the window. In the fourteenth century he is
still content with the space of a small panel, bearing his effigy or his
arms, at the base of the window. Even in the fifteenth he is content at
times to be represented by his patron saint, as in the beautiful window
in the chapel of Jacques Coeur, at Bourges. In the sixteenth he is
very much in evidence. No scruple of modesty, or suspicion of
unworthiness, restrains him from putting in an appearance in the midst
of the most serious and sacred scenes, very much sometimes to the
confusion of the story. Eventually the donor, his wife, and perhaps his
family, with their patron saints, who literally back them up in their
obtrusiveness, claim, if they do not absorb, all our attention, and the
sacred subject takes quite a back place. In the foreground of the scene
of the Last Judgment which occupies the great west window at S. Gudule,
Brussels, kneels the donor, with attendant angels, on a scale much
larger than the rest of the world, competing in fact in importance with
the figure of Our Lord in Majesty above.
However, the vain-glory of princes and seigneurs resulted in the
production of works of such consummate art that, as artists, we can but
be grateful to them. In the presence of the splendid achievement of Van
Orley, who shall say that the artist does not justify himself? Nothing
equal to it _in its way_ was ever done.
[Illustration: 161. THE PARABLE OF THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN,
GOUDA.]
It may not be according to the strict rules of the game: it is not; but
that it is magnificent, no fair-minded artist can deny. Our just cause
of quarrel is, not with that, but with what that led to, what that
became in less competent hands. It is the price we pay for strong men
that they induce weak ones to follow them in a direction where they are
bound to fail. Van Orley's triumphant answer to any carping of ours
would be, to point to the great west window of the cathedral, designed
on earlier and more orthodox lines, and say: "Compare!" We have no right
to limit art to what small folk can do.
The further development of the Netherlandish canopy is shown in the
Gouda glass above. Here is still considerable skill in the way in which
the window is set out, and the patches of colour are introduced (for
example, in the two figures leaning on the balcony and the wreath of
leaves and fruit above them) amidst the predominant white,--if only the
white glass had been whiter in effect. But there is altogether too much
of this architectural work, even though it is used, in the pictured
parable at least, to dramatic purpose. The notion of the Pharisee
gesticulating away in the far distance, whilst the Publican modestly
fills the foreground, is cleverly conceived and skilfully carried out;
but the picture is overpowered by its ponderous frame.
[Illustration: 162. GOUDA, 1596.]
It is in the wonderful series of late sixteenth century windows at
Gouda, in Holland, that the fullest and furthest development of
pictorial design is shown. The period of their execution extends from
1555 to 1603; and, as they are admittedly the finest works of their day,
they may be taken to represent the best work of the latter half of the
sixteenth century. They are, in fact, typical of the period, only at its
best; it is not often that work of that date was designed with such
power or painted with such skill. The diagrams given here and on pages
79, 244, 258, do no manner of justice to the glass; but they will help
the reader better to understand what is said concerning it. They
indicate at least the lines on which these daring designers planned
their huge windows, the main lines which pictorial design on a large
scale is destined henceforth to take.
In the clerestory of S. Eustache, Paris, are some large two-light
windows which somewhat recall the Gouda work; but the design is rather
original. One vast architectural composition in white, not very heavily
painted, fills the window, against which stand a series of giant
Apostles in colour, one in each light, occupying about one-third of the
height of the window. This much recognition of the separate openings is
something to be thankful for towards the middle of the seventeenth
century.
[Illustration: 163. S. SEBALD'S, NUREMBERG.]
A striking feature, we have seen, about the later Renaissance canopy as
shown at Gouda, and already at Brussels, is its vast dimensions. It no
longer frames the picture: it is a prominent, sometimes the most
prominent, feature in its design.
Even earlier than that the canopy was already sometimes of very
considerable extent. At S. Sebald's, Nuremberg, there is a great
altar-like canopy ending in a pediment about two-thirds of the way up
the window, with plain white glass above, in which the shafting at the
side takes up practically the entire width of the two outer lights, as
here shown in the diagram of a portion of the glass. Yet this window is
as early as the year 1515, and before the period when masses of deep
shadow were represented by paint. Accordingly the canopy in this
instance is glazed in pot-metal of steely grey-blue, which, with the
little figures, mainly in steely grey armour against a white ground, and
the heraldic shields at the side, mainly in red and white, all very
slightly shaded, has a singularly fresh, bright, and delicate effect.
Another instance of preponderating architectural work occurs also at
Nuremberg in the choir of the church of S. Lorenz, and though it belongs
to the beginning of the seventeenth century, that too is leaded up much
as it might have been in the fifteenth. But the great clumsy column,
opposite, with its clumsier figure of Fame, against a ruby background
extending right up to the stonework of the window, is not a satisfactory
filling to the outer light of a big window.
The last thing to expect of late Renaissance work is modesty in the use
of architectural accessories, whether in the form of frame or
background. Frame and background they are not; they claim to be all or
nothing. Just as ornamental design was gradually pushed out of use by
figure work, so the picture was in time overpowered by its frame. And
the frame was in the end such that, when it came to be discarded, it was
not much loss.
[Illustration: 164. S. LORENZ, NUREMBERG.]
In the latter half of the sixteenth century and thenceforward design
continued to travel in the direction of what was meant for a sort of
realism. If the more or less altar-like canopy was retained, it was
meant to appear as if it stood bodily under the arch of the window; if
it was abandoned, you were supposed to see more or less _through_ the
window, perhaps into distant country, perhaps into receding aisles of
the church.
It formed part of the canopy scheme, that the structure should end
before it reached the top of the window, so that you could see beyond it
into space. The designers would have been only too happy if they could
have done away with the glass above that. If they had had big sheets of
plate glass, they would certainly have used them to produce the effect
of out of doors--there was already a _plein air_ school in the
eighteenth century--as they had not, they were obliged to accept the
inevitable, and lead up their white glass; but they went as far as they
could to doing away with its effect, using thin, transparent material,
which was not meant to appear as though it formed part of the
composition. Occasionally they would use pale blue glass, or tint it in
a blue enamel, further to suggest the sky beyond. This (page 222) would
commonly be glazed in squares. The pure white glass also was often
glazed in square or, as at Brussels, diamond quarries (page 71).
Subjects themselves, it has been explained, came to be glazed as much as
possible in rectangular panes; but it marks, it may here be mentioned, a
decline of design, as well as of technique, when these came to interfere
in any way, as they did, with the drawing. Having made up his mind that
his design is to be glazed in rigid square lines, the artist should
logically have designed accordingly. He had only to mark off the
glazing lines on his cartoon, and scheme his composition so that it was
not hurt by them. Towards the seventeenth century the plain glass, the
extra part beyond the canopy or beyond the picture, would often be
glazed in some simple pattern. That, you might imagine, stood for the
window _behind_ the picture or the monument. At the church of S.
Jacques, Antwerp, above a picture of the Circumcision, is a canopy
leaded in squares and painted to look like falsehood, beyond which clear
glass is glazed in a pattern.
Occasionally an attempt is made to merge the picture into the plain
glazing above, as at S. Paul's, Antwerp, where the yellow sky, against
which is shown the distant city, and so on, is glazed in squares, which
further off become gradually white, and then at their interstices have
smaller diamond-shaped pieces of glass let in.
Where a subject glazed in quarries is represented against a background
of plain glazing of more elaborate design, there is difficulty in
joining the two, except by means of a strong lead outline to the
figures, or whatever may come next to the plain glass, which outline the
seventeenth century designer was anxious before all things to avoid.
Accordingly, as the plain pattern work approached the margin of the
painted work, he replaced the leads by paint, which sham leads, of
course, could be made to disappear as seemed good to him. But these
little games of his, to judge by results, were hardly worth the candle.
It will be seen how, in the French glass on page 200, the canopy came to
be backed and surrounded by unpainted glass, quarries in that case.
There the canopy sufficiently occupies the window space not to strike
one unpleasantly; but that is sixteenth century work; later, and
especially in Flanders, canopies are represented, as in the cathedral at
Antwerp (1615), adrift, as it were, in a sea of plain glazing. Even when
the glass has some quality of glass the effect of that is not happy.
When the glass is thin and transparent it is disastrous.
At S. Jacques, Antwerp, again, coats of arms hover unsupported in
mid-air, the mere lines of the glazing being quite inadequate to their
apparent support. It is different, of course, where the heraldic device,
as opposite, is itself little more than plain glazing. That is a very
mild form of art; but, in its way, it is satisfactory enough.
Perhaps least fortunate of all in effect are the landscapes at S.
Jacques, which float, without even a canopy to frame them, in an
atmosphere of leaded glass. Antwerp is rich in glass, much of it very
cleverly executed, which would serve very well to illustrate how _not_
to design a window.
[Illustration: 165. GOUDA, 1688.]
The place of the canopy was supplied sometimes, especially in later
Netherlandish work, by the cartouche so dear to the Dutch. It fulfilled
very much the office of the canopy, framing the design; and, had it
been kept white, it would have framed it well, affording circular and
other shapes which form a welcome variation upon the usual arched
opening. But it was not white at all; very much the reverse. Indeed the
idea of the Dutch cartouche, with its interpenetration of parts, and
curling and projecting straps and bolts, tempts the painter to a heavy
method of painting, destructive of the very quality of white. The device
depends for its effect far too much upon force of shadow to be of any
great use in white glass. The comparatively early cartouche in the lower
half of the window at Gouda, given on page 223, is of the simplest kind,
and has none of that too-seductive bolt work; but it is dull and heavy
in effect, being painted in heavy brown, with the idea of giving
atmospheric effect to the picture supposed to be seen through it.
[Illustration: 166. PLAIN GLAZING, S. GERVAIS, PARIS.]
A great cartouche is often used as a kind of base to a canopy extending
across the whole width of a wide window, or the base of the canopy may
include a very important cartouche, occupied in either case by a long
inscription. Here again the oblong patch of white or yellow may have
value, in proportion as it is allowed to preserve the quality of glass.
There is, however, something poor and mean about large areas of small
lettering, and it is a pity to see the opportunity which bold
inscriptions give quite thrown away. Moreover, the inscriptions are
invariably too long. The framers of inscriptions do not realise the
multitude of readers they scare away by the volume of their wording. The
design of a window at S. Jacques, Antwerp, consists merely of an
inscription label, with a helmet above and mantling in black and white
(the black, of course, paint) set in plain glazing.
Up to the very last whole windows were glazed very often in plain
patterns, usually all in clear white glass. A couple of designs, into
which a little colour is introduced, are given below and opposite. In
spite of the increased facility for cutting glass, afforded from the
beginning of the century by the use of the diamond, patterns were seldom
very elaborate; but, by way of illustrating what can be done by means of
the diamond, there is shown overleaf quite a conjuring feat of glazing.
The thick black lines in the drawing represent the leads; the white
spaces enclosed are plain white glass, rather poor in quality; the
thinner lines stand for cracks, possibly not, or not all of them, of the
glazier's doing, for it would be almost impossible to handle such work
without breaking it. It is well-nigh incredible that each of these
_fleurs-de-lys_ should have been cut out of a single piece of glass, the
marginal band to it out of a second, and so with the background spaces.
Glaziers may be inclined to question the possibility of such a _tour de
force_, even in poor thin glass. Certainly one would not have thought it
possible; but there it is, in the museum at Angers, close to the eye,
where you can see and examine it. This is glazing with a vengeance. It
is not the sort of thing that any one would undertake, except as a trial
piece, to show his skill; but if ever a glazier deserved his diploma of
mastership here is the man.
[Illustration: 167. PLAIN GLAZING, LISIEUX.]
[Illustration: 168. A TOUR DE FORCE IN GLAZING, ANGERS MUSEUM.]
The composition of some of the windows belonging to the first half of
the seventeenth century at Troyes does not follow the general tendency
of the period. The better part of this, if not the greater, is
attributed to Linard Gontier (1606-1648). But the design of these
windows, and the style of them, is so varied, and sometimes so little of
the period, that one is disposed to think, either that he was a painter
only and did not design them at all, or that he borrowed his designs
freely from Italian and other sources. The panel on page 400, the Virgin
girt with clouds and cherubs, distinctly recalls the work of the Della
Robbia School; and again the figures opposite remind one of late
sixteenth century paintings. An unusual thing, however, about some of
these windows is the way they are set out. The disposition of the design
of the three-light window from S. Martin ès Vignes is as simple and
severe as though it had been Gothic. The glazing, too, is not in
squares, but follows the design. Except for the rather robustious
drawing of the figures, and the futile kind of detail which does duty
for canopy work, the glass might belong to the first half of the
sixteenth century.
[Illustration: 169. THREE LIGHTS, S. MARTIN-ÈS-VIGNES, TROYES.]
Again, in the subject of the marriage of SS. Joachim and Anna on page
234, it is rather by the types of feature and the cast of draperies,
than by the composition, that the date of the work proclaims itself. It
is proclaimed, of course, unmistakably by the use of enamel, not only in
the warm-coloured flesh, but throughout, to support, and sometimes to
supply the place of, pot-metal glass. Nevertheless, the effect of much
of this glass is brilliant to a degree almost unprecedented in the first
half of the seventeenth century. The painter had skill enough to get the
maximum of modelling with the minimum of paint. He could afford,
therefore, to use paint sparingly, leaving plenty of glass clear, and
seldom sacrificing its translucency, as was done in the group of donors
on page 81, whose black mantles are rendered in solid paint. Those
heavily painted figures recall a couple of Donors in a window at Antwerp
(1626), equally black robed, against a nearly black screen, all in
paint: they would have made a capital votive picture; but they are about
as unlike glass as anything one can conceive.
Exceptionally good seventeenth century work is to be found also at Auch.
It seems that it was proposed (towards 1650) to complete the windows in
a way worthy of the splendid beginning in the choir; but the art was not
forthcoming; and the Chapter of that day was wise enough to fall back
upon comparatively unimportant quarry windows, with borders and tracery
in white and stain and blue enamel, which is at least brilliant in
colour, and pleasing in effect. That may be said also of the Western
Rose. In the Roses of the transepts, the artist goes further, and
produces, by means of arabesque in white and stain, upon a ground mainly
of blue and ruby, occasionally varied by green, each light defined by a
simple border of white and stain, a couple of flamboyant Rose windows
with glass which would do credit to the period of the stonework. They
might well (at the distance they are placed from the eye) be taken at
first sight for Early Renaissance work. In fact they are really mosaic
glass--so rare a thing by this time that the windows are probably of
their kind unique.
Even at its best enamelled glass is less effective than the earlier
work. In proportion as the place of pot-metal is supplied by enamel, the
colour is inevitably diluted, and at times it is quite thin. Indeed, it
is pretty well proved, by the work of men who are masters in their way,
that, in painted as distinguished from mosaic glass, the choice lies
between weak colour and opacity. At Auch and at Troyes we have weak but
still often pure and brilliant colour.
The opposite defect of opacity reaches probably its greatest depth in
the four great Rubens-like windows at S. Gudule in the chapel of Our
Lady immediately opposite that of the Holy Sacrament, where Van Orley's
windows are. The design is there absolutely regardless of any
consideration of glass or architecture. Each window is treated as a vast
oil picture, without so much as a frame. Here is no vista of distant
architecture, nor any such relief of lighter colour as you find at
Gouda. Force of colour is sought by masses of deep shadow, into which
the figures merge. This shadow being obtained by paint, and the glazing
being in the now usual squares, there are literally yards of painted
quarries, which, except when the sun is at its fiercest, are all but
black. And withal the effect is not rich as compared with even the
common Gothic glass, though it is not without a certain picturesqueness
when perchance the sun struggles through. A painter might find it an
admirable background to his picture; no architect would choose it for
his building. Three of these windows were designed, it seems, by a pupil
of Rubens, Van Thulden, who worked under him at the Luxembourg, and they
have all the character of his work--except that the colour is dull.
At New College, Oxford, are some smaller windows with figures, also
recalling the manner of the master, and said to be by pupils of his.
They, too, are dull and heavy in effect. The canopies over the figures
are terrible caricatures of the Gothic shrines in the ante-chapel.
Better seventeenth century glass is to be found at Oxford in the work of
the Van Lingen, a family of Dutchmen settled in England, who executed
windows in Wadham and Balliol Colleges and elsewhere. Some of these are
rich in colour. Apart from the rather interesting use of enamel made in
them, they are not of great value; but they show as well as more
important examples the kind of thing which did duty for design.
The windows in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, London, illustrate not unfairly the
dreary level of dulness as to colour and design to which seventeenth
century glass declined. That it could fall still lower was shown, for
example, by Peckitt, of York, who is responsible for the glass on the
north side of New College Chapel, Oxford, facing the work of the
Dutchmen. These date from 1765 to 1774.
[Illustration: 170. ST. MARTIN ÈS VIGNES, TROYES.]
The history of eighteenth century windows may, if one may plagiarise a
famous bull, be put into the fewest possible words: there were
none--worth looking at. To find pleasure even in Sir Joshua's design at
New College, you must consider it as anything but glass.