DOMESTIC GLASS.
It is customary to draw a distinction between "Ecclesiastical" and
"Domestic" glass.
In mediæval days the Church was the patron of art; and, when kings and
corporations commissioned stained glass windows, it was usually to
present them to Mother Church. It is in churches, then, that the greater
part of the old glass remains to us, iconoclastic mania notwithstanding;
and it is only there that the course of glass painting can be traced.
Once in a while, as at S. Mary's Hall, Coventry, one comes upon a great
window designed to decorate a civic building; but the whiles are few and
far between. When such windows do occur they prove not to differ widely
from more familiar church work.
What, then, is the difference between the two kinds of glass? It is not
that the one is ecclesiastical the other secular, the one religious the
other profane art. "Sacred Art" is a term consecrated by use; but,
strictly speaking, it is a meaningless combination of words, signifying,
if it signify anything, that the speaker confounds the art of telling
with the thing told. Art has no more a religion than it has a country.
No doubt there clings always to the art of the devout believer some
fervour of faith, as there may hang about the sceptic's doing a chill of
doubt. The historian will enrich his glass with story, the preacher will
convey in it a dogma. Poet or proser, philosopher or fool, may each in
turn peep out of the window. Youth will everywhere betray its ardour,
manhood its vigour, age its experience. A live man cannot help but put
himself into his work. But none of that is art. His art is in the way he
expresses himself, not in what he says; and there is no more religion in
his glass painting than in his handwriting, though the graphologist may
read in it his character.
The difference between church glass and domestic arises, speaking from
the point of view of art, solely from architectural conditions. In so
far as they are both glass, the same methods of glazing and painting
apply to both. It is only in so far as the position and purpose of the
two are different, that they call for different treatment in design. The
treatment suitable to a great hall does not materially differ from that
adapted to a church; the same breadth of design, the same largeness of
execution, are required; what suits a cloister would suit a passage.
When, however, it comes to the windows of dwelling-rooms, the scheme and
execution appropriate even to the smallest chapels of a church, would
most likely be out of place. The distinction is very much as that
between wall decoration in fresco and cabinet paintings in oil- or
water-colour.
In the house there is less need than in the church for severity, and
more for liveliness, less occasion for breadth, and more for delicacy.
The scale of the dwelling-room itself justifies, perhaps demands, a
smaller treatment. Here, if anywhere, is opportunity for that
preciousness of execution which, in work of more monumental character,
it seems a pity to expend upon so frail a substance as glass--frailer
than ever when it was the thin white glass employed for window panes.
For, so far from the glazier of the sixteenth or seventeenth century
imagining, as we mostly do, that it was any part of the purpose of
domestic glass to shut out the view--less need in those days!--he
employed in most cases a material which was not merely translucent but
absolutely transparent.
This use of transparent glass marks a distinction, and forms something
of a new departure. It was employed to some extent in Renaissance church
work; but there it was more as a background to the stained glass window
than as a part of it. Here the transparent glass is the window; and the
design, whether in pot-metal or in enamel, shows more or less against
the clear.
The relationship of certain seventeenth century windows at Antwerp to
the Italian windows on pages 295, 299, 352, is obvious. They may be
quite possibly founded upon them. There is the same arrangement of
subjects in cartouches, set in geometric glazing of clear glass. But in
the Italian windows one kind of glass is used throughout (the little
pieces of thin pot-metal colour in the cartouches, and so on, scarcely
count); and the proportion of the painted work to clear glass is so
schemed that, although you may feel that the plain work wants just a
touch of enrichment to bring it all together, you are not asked
deliberately to imagine yourself to be looking through, beyond the
painting, into space.
[Illustration: 203. ITALIAN GRISAILLE, FLORENCE.]
The detail in these windows from the Certosa in Val d'Ema, near
Florence, is all outlined and painted in brown upon clear white glass,
the flesh warmer in tint than the rest; the high lights are brushed out
of a matt tint, and some pale stain is washed in. The artful thing about
the design is, the cunning way in which the borders are planned, so as
to avoid the absolute parallelism of marginal lines. For the rest the
design is rather characteristically Late Renaissance, though the
relation of border to cartouche, and of both together to clear glass, is
better than usual. It will be noted that these are not strictly domestic
windows; but they are designed to be seen about on a level with the eye,
and from a distance of not more than ten feet, which is as far as the
width of the cloister allows one to get away from them.
[Illustration: 204. CERTOSA IN VAL D'EMA.]
They fulfil, therefore, altogether very much the conditions which apply
generally to domestic glass, and may be taken, if not as types of
domestic work, at least as something on the way from the church to the
house. This, though the common type of Italian Renaissance grisaille,
was not invariable. At S. Frediano, Lucca, for example, there is a white
window, which, except for a little medallion in its centre, might at a
glance almost pass for thirteenth century work: the Cinque-Cento scroll
is so rendered, with cross-hatched ground and all, as to suggest the
early mediæval craftsman; it is centuries away from Da Udine in style.
The domestic quarry window differed, in mediæval work, in no respect
from church work. In the sixteenth century it took rather a new form. It
consisted no longer of a more or less diaper-like all-over pattern, but
of a panel, designed to be glazed in quarries. Here, again, is an
approximation to the seventeenth century practice of leading up
pictures in rectangular panes, but only an approximation. There is this
important difference, that the quarry window starts from the lead lines,
and is religiously designed within them.
Thus to accept, the simple square and obviously fit lines of quarry
glazing, and to expend his art in painting upon them, simplifies the
task of the glass painter; and he very frequently fell back upon that
plan, more readily perhaps when he happened to know more about painting
than about glazing. That was Da Udine's case, who is credited with the
design of the windows in the Laurentian library at Florence, as of those
at the Certosa in Val d'Ema. They bear a date some few years after his
death; but they are so like what he certainly would have done that,
directly or indirectly, the design is clearly due to him. The one
illustrated on page 298 is quite one of the best of these windows; in
the others the ornament is even less coherent. The characteristic
arabesque is painted in brown enamel, with redder enamel for the flesh
tints, some yellow stain, and a little blue enamel in the heraldic
lozenge, all upon clear white glass. The effect is delicate and silvery
and no appreciable amount of light is excluded (a point usually of some
importance in domestic work); but, though the main forms are designed
within the lead lines, one feels that these have not been considered
enough, that the leads compete with the painting, and that the bars, in
particular, which are far thicker than need be, and occur with
unnecessary frequency (in fact, at every horizontal quarry joint but
one), very seriously mar the effect of delicate painting. That is as
much as to say that the design, graceful and fanciful as it is, does not
fulfil the conditions of quarry glass.
It is not enough for complete success in this form of window that the
quarry lines shall be the basis of the design; the painting also must be
strong enough to hold its own against leads and bars. That is hardly the
case with the exceptionally delicate ornament in the Dutch glass
opposite. But here, notwithstanding that the scroll is slighter than the
Italian work and more delicately painted, the central patch of enamel
colour in the shield and mantling does, to some extent, focus the
attention there, and so withdraw the eye from the lead lines. The window
is not merely cleverly designed; it is a frank, straightforward, manly
piece of work, marred only by the comparative heaviness of the leads.
The truth is that a glass painter becomes so used to lead lines, and
gets to take them so much for granted, that they do not offend him; and
he is apt to forget how obtrusive they may appear in the eyes of the
unaccustomed. Hence his sometimes seemingly brutal treatment of tenderly
painted ornament.
[Illustration: 205. DUTCH QUARRY WINDOW, S. K. MUSEUM.]
Other good examples of Dutch domestic glass, not quite so good as this,
but painted with admirable directness, are to be found at the _Musée des
Antiquités_ at Brussels. At the Louvre also the Dutch work is good.
There are two lights there in which cartouches enclosing small oval
subjects (fables) spread over the greater part of the quarry glazing,
leaving only the lowermost of them comparatively empty. On these are
painted butterflies, a dragon-fly, even a gad-fly, almost to the life.
These flies upon the window pane, like the little miniature figures in
the bottom corner quarries on page 301, are trivial enough in idea; but
the idea is cleverly and daintily expressed; and one does not expect
much else than triviality in seventeenth century design. Moreover, in
the privacy of domestic life it is permitted to be trivial.
For dignity of treatment it would be difficult to match the specimen of
Flemish glass shown on page 304, now at Warwick Castle. Like the Dutch
and Italian work, it is painted on clear glass but without the
prettiness of flesh tint, and the background to the ornament (it shows
dull grey in the print) is brilliant yellow stain. This little light and
its companion on page 98 are as large in style as they are beautiful in
effect.
There is a gayer touch in the less seriously decorative panel of French
work in the Louvre given on page 307. In that pot-metal is used for the
dark ruby of the outer dress, and for the little bits of blue rather
cunningly let into the spandrils of the arch. The fancifully designed
canopy, the arabesque, and a portion of the drapery are in stain, all
delicately painted upon clear glass, and glazed mainly on quarry
lines--from which, however, the designer saw fit to depart. What he
meant by the unfortunate circular lead line about the head is difficult
to imagine. It can hardly be, like other erratic leading, the result of
mending. No fracture could possibly have steered so carefully between
the figure and the ornament. It looks almost as if at the last he had
lost confidence in his technique, and, in trying vainly to avoid lead
lines, had ended in giving them extraordinary emphasis.
In ultra-delicate domestic work the leads are more than ever the
difficulty. One is uncomfortably conscious of them in the wonderful
series of windows--formerly at Ecouen, and now in the Château de
Chantilly--in which is set forth in forty pictures the story of Cupid
and Psyche. A specimen of these is given on page 218, thanks to the
friendly permission of Monsieur Magne, who illustrates the whole of them
in his admirable monograph of the Montmorency glass. The legend to the
effect that Raffaelle designed and Palissy painted them, is past all
possible belief; but they are very remarkable specimens of sixteenth
century work, restored about the period of the First Empire, and mark
somewhere about the high-water mark of French domestic picture glass.
A glance at these windows is enough to show that they were never schemed
with any definite view to glazing. Rather it would appear that the
pictures were first designed and then the leads introduced where best
they could be disguised. But the disguise is everywhere transparent.
Such gauzy painting is inadequate; it hides nothing. You see always the
thick black lines of lead, cruel enough, but clinging in a cowardly way
to the edges of weak forms, sneaking into shadows, and foolishly
pretending to pass themselves off as the continuation of painted
outlines not one-twentieth part so strong as they. The sparing use of
glazing lines makes them all the more conspicuous. They must originally
have asserted themselves even more than they do now; for the accidental
lead lines introduced in reparation, however much they damage the
pictures, do in a measure support the original glazing lines, and pull
the windows together. The Chantilly glass goes to prove the
impossibility of satisfactorily disposing of the leads in very small
figure subjects in grisaille. In work on a larger scale it wants only a
man who knows his trade to manage it. Witness what was done in church
work.
[Illustration: 206. GRISAILLE, WARWICK CASTLE.]
The propriety of executing figures in grisaille at all has been called
in question by Viollet le Duc. "Every bit of white glass," he said,
"should be diapered with pattern traced with a brush; and, since this
treatment is not possible in flesh painting, flesh ought not to be
painted." Moreover, he says that grisaille has always the appearance of
vibrating, and the vibration fatigues the eye; therefore, he argues, it
is labour lost to paint white figures. Far be it from an ornamentist to
deny that a great deal too much importance is attached to figure work in
decoration. But the amount of tracing necessary on white glass is
relative. In grisaille it is quite safe to leave some glass clear; and,
if it is not worth while to paint figures, is it worth while to paint
anything worth looking at, or worth painting?
[Illustration: 207. LOUIS XIII. AND ANNE OF AUSTRIA.]
The truth is, it wearies the sight to look at any glass for long at a
stretch, and for a mere _coup d'oeil_ the most brutal workmanship
would often do. But, if work is ever to be seen from near, the charm is
gone when once you know how coarse it is. One tires of crude work, and
delights more and more in what is delicate. Whoever has taken pleasure
in such work as the windows at S. Alpin at Troyes would find it hard to
renounce the figure in grisaille.
To return to the leading of grisaille. Of the two extremes, the bold,
even the too bold, acknowledgment of the constructional lines of a
window, is far preferable to the timid attempt to conceal them. The
glaziers of the Renaissance eventually got over the difficulty by the
simple plan of inserting into quarry windows (usually unpainted) or into
pattern work of plain glass only, little panes of painted glass. In this
way there are introduced into some windows at the Château de Chaumont
some very beautiful little portrait medallions, outlined with a firmness
and modelled with a delicacy which remind one of the drawings of Clouet.
At the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg are some similar medallion heads,
quite Holbein-ish in character. A later portrait panel, lacking the
style and draughtsmanship of these, but very cleverly painted (by Linard
Gontier they say), is reproduced on page 305. It represents, as the
inscription and cypher go to show, Louis Treize and Anne of Austria, as
bride and bridegroom. Its date, therefore, speaks for itself. Another
little pane by Gontier, from the Hôtel des Arquebusiers at Troyes, now
in the library there, is given on page 310. The characteristic
ornamental work surrounding this, though not forming a consecutive frame
to the picture, is of about the same period with it (1621). Its design
consists of that modified form of Arab foliation (compare it with the
detail on page 352), which was very much used in damascening and niello
work; indeed, the French still call that kind of pattern "_nielle_."
Here it is traced in a fine brown outline, and filled in partly with
yellow stain and partly with blue enamel. The effect is pleasing.
[Illustration: 208. DOMESTIC GLASS, THE LOUVRE.]
It was in Switzerland that glass painting other than for churches was
most extensively practised. The Council Chambers of Swiss towns, and the
halls of trade and other guilds, were enriched with bands of armorial
glass across the windows; and throughout the sixteenth century it was
the custom to present to neighbouring towns or friendly Corporations a
painted window panel. Great part of these have been dispersed, and in
Switzerland they are now perhaps rarer than in the museums of other
countries. The Germanic Museum at Nuremberg and the Hôtel Clûny, at
Paris, are rich in Swiss glass; and we have some at South Kensington.
Superb examples, however, still remain in Switzerland--for example, in
the Rath-haus at Lucerne--though they belong to a period as late as the
first ten years of the seventeenth century.
[Illustration: 209. PIERCED QUARRIES, WARWICK.]
The usual form of design consisted of a sort of florid canopy frame of
moderate dimensions, enclosing a shield or shields of arms, supported by
fantastically dressed men-at-arms. There was often great spirit in the
swagger of these melodramatic swashbucklers, admirably expressive of the
idea which underlies all heraldry: "I am somebody," they seem to say,
"pray who are you?" It is a comparatively modest specimen of this class
that is presented on page 90. In the windows of a private house it was
frequently the master and mistress who supported the armorial shield,
all in their Sunday best, and very proud of themselves too. Little Bible
subjects were also painted, mainly in grisaille. It was for window panes
that Holbein drew the Stations of the Cross, now among the chief
treasures of the museum at Bâle. These also must be classed with
domestic work. They may in some cases have been destined for a church;
but they would much more appropriately decorate a private oratory.
These heraldic or pictorial panes go even beyond the delicacy of cabinet
pictures, and are sometimes more on the scale of miniatures; but of such
miniature painting the Swiss were masters. They carried craftmanship to
its very furthest point, and among them traditions of good work lingered
long after they were quite dead in France. Of English work there was not
much; and of that the less said the better.
Far into the eighteenth century the Swiss still had a care for their
window panes, and, when painting went out of fashion, engraved them with
armorial or other devices. Precisely that kind of engraving was employed
also upon polished mirrors, of which one finds examples in Italy.
Unpainted quarry windows in English houses were sometimes relieved, at
the same time that ventilation was secured, by the occasional
introduction (in the place of glass) of little fretted panels of pierced
lead, as shown on page 308. Below is a diamond-shaped piercing of the
Jacobean period.
[Illustration: 210. QUARRY OF FRETTED LEAD.]
[Illustration: 211. DOMESTIC WINDOW PANE, TROYES.]