CHAPTER XXVI.

A PLEA FOR ORNAMENT.

There is a direction in which glass has never been fully developed, that

of purely ornamental design. This is the more to be deplored because

that direction is the one in which was most scope for the peculiar depth

and brilliancy of colour characteristic of mosaic glass. Ornament was

used in the thirteenth century not only as a setting for figure

medallions, but as of sufficient interest to form of itself most

beautiful windows in grisaille. Presently the attractions of figure work

put an end to that; and, furthermore, the preference for picture

naturally led to the development of design in the direction of glass

painting, which lent itself so much more readily than mosaic to

pictorial expression. We owe to that, not only the perfection of glass

painting, and its ultimate degradation, but the neglect of latent

possibilities in more thoroughly mosaic glass, aye, in pure glazing.

Even in figure work, much might be done for clerestory and other distant

work, at all events, in pure mosaic glass. Those who have not closely

observed old glass have no conception of the amount of leadwork there is

in the windows they admire, at the very moment that they deprecate

leading, so little do these interfere with the design, when disposed

with the cunning of a craftsman. One can imagine figures on a large

scale boldly blocked out, with broad shadows, in which not only the

shadows, but even the reflected lights in them, might be glazed in

pot-metal, and from the floor of a big church the leads would be

inappreciable. But, except in work upon an absolutely heroic scale,

there would always be the difficulty of the flesh; the features would

have to be painted; and glass pictures of this kind would needs be

designed with a severe simplicity not calculated to satisfy the modern

pictorial sense.

The advocates of painting complain that due consideration of the

qualities of glass would limit the artist to the baldest kind of

pictorial effect. Something certainly must be sacrificed to fit

treatment of the material, or glass suffers, whatever picture may gain.

That is what has happened. But if so much sacrifice is necessary to

figure, why always adopt that form of design? Why not sometimes at least

abandon subject, and seek what can best be done in glass, even though

that be barbaric? It is not quite certain but that glass really lends

itself only to a rather barbaric kind of design, or what we are

barbarous enough to call barbaric. This is certain: the interest of

figure work has put an end to ornamental glass. It has become almost an

article of faith with us that, to the making of a window worth looking

at, figure design is indispensable. That should not be so. And, seeing

that picture does not afford full scope for the qualities which

glass-lovers most dearly love in glass, it seems rather cruel that

picture should so largely preponderate in its design as to suppress the

possibilities in the way of ornament. Why should it be so?

There are two very important reasons for the introduction of figure into

glass, the one literary, the other artistic. In the first place, we love

a story, that is no more than human; we want to know what it is all

about, that is no more than rational; and figure subjects afford the

most obvious means of satisfying those cravings of ours. But artists

want these cravings satisfied by means of art. Some of them, perhaps,

think more of the means employed than of the end achieved, and would

have "art for art's sake." Theirs is a doctrine of very limited

application. Sanity insists upon subordination of the means to end; and

art is not an end in itself, nor is craftsmanship. It is not, therefore,

for one moment suggested that story, sentiment, meaning, in windows,

should be ruthlessly sacrificed to craftsmanship, even though expression

implied the use of figure, which it does not. What is claimed, is merely

this: that when you employ a material or a process some consideration is

due to it.

Before undertaking to express an idea, it is always as well for the

artist to consider how far its expression is consistent with art. If it

can be expressed only at the cost of all that is best in art, it were

better to adopt some other means of expression. If a particular craft is

your one means of expression, and that particular thing cannot well be

said in it, then say what can be said; it will be to much more purpose

than saying even a better thing and saying it ill. The better the

thought, the greater the crime of saying it inadequately.

After all, the sentiment, or what not, which people ask for in glass,

and which compels figure work, is not, in the majority of instances, by

any means so important, even in their eyes, but that they would

sacrifice it readily enough if they knew the price in art at which they

would have to pay for it. Let patrons of stained glass, if they care for

art, ponder this statement; it is not spoken in haste, but in

conviction.

There is one reason of sentiment which would argue against great part of

the use that is made of figure work, at all events in church glass, the

doubt, namely, as to how far it is possible, in these days, to reconcile

the devout with the decorative treatment of sacred subjects. We are all

admiration when we gaze up at the splendid figure of Moses in the great

transept window at Chartres. But it is the artist in us that is

entranced, the lover of glass, and especially of colour; the artless

worshipper might feel that the dignity of the Lawgiver would perhaps

have been better expressed with less attention to decorative effect. We

are not shocked at the archaic effigy, because we realize that reverence

underlies its simplicity. In modern work it is otherwise. Artistic

intention, admirable or not from the æsthetic point of view, is

responsible for the introduction into our churches of delineations of

all that Christians hold sacred so ridiculous, it is a wonder devout

worshippers allow them to be there. The excuse for glass is its

decorative effect. Its value is in its colour. A Saint in stained glass

(to mention no higher Person) stands in a window for just so much

colour: is not that rather a degradation of the saint?

In the second place, apart altogether from what has been called the

literary interest (which no one will dispute) there is in figure work a

charm, altogether artistic, in the very unexpectedness of the

colour-patches you get in it, not accidental quite, but in many

instances at least, inspired by accident. The besetting sin of ornament

is obviousness; it has a way of distributing itself too symmetrically

and evenly, of laying its secret bare to the most casual glance. We see

at once there is nothing to find out in it, and our interest drops to

zero.

In figure design, on the contrary, there are breaks even in the very

best balanced scheme; there is always something unexpected, unforeseen,

something to kindle interest; in fact, the difficulty is, there, to

distribute the composition evenly enough. The question arises whether

this sameness, and consequent tameness, of ornament, the way the points

of intended interest recur with irritating frequency and regularity,

resolving themselves into mere spots--whether this defect is inherent in

ornament, and inseparable from it.

Proof that it is not is afforded by heraldry, distinctly a branch of

ornamental design, in which, for precisely the same reasons as in figure

work, we get just that inevitable deviation from system, and more

especially from symmetry, which seems necessary to the salvation of

ornament. Where by happy chance an ornamental window has been patched

with glass not belonging to it, or where portions of it have been

misplaced, we get similar relief from monotony. Here the unexpectedness

of contrast, colour, and so on, is accidental; in heraldry it is, in the

nature of things, unforeseen of the artist, and unavoidable. May not

similar results be obtained of set purpose and design? Surely they may.

Were it otherwise, it would be worth falling back now and then upon

haphazard, and letting colour come as it might.

Happily there is no occasion for that feeble sort of fatalism. Given a

colourist and a man with that sense of distribution (whether of line,

mass, or colour) which makes the artist, what is to hinder him from

deliberately planning so much of surprise as may be necessary to tickle

the appetite for the ornamental? The ogre in the path is what we call

economy. Because ornament can without doubt be more cheaply executed

than figure work, it is taken for granted that it must be reserved by

rights for cheap work. What else is there to recommend it? And, that

being so, ornament being but padding, by all means, it is argued, let it

be not only cheap but of the cheapest!

Design, moreover, if it be worth having at all, is costly, and there is

clearly thrift in repeating the same pattern, and even one unit of it,

over and over again. The practice of saving design in this way has

become at last so much a matter of course, that no one thinks of

designing an ornamental window, as a whole, without repetition of

pattern--except the artist; and with him it is a fond desire which he

hopes perhaps some day to fulfil--at his own expense.

Under circumstances such as these, what wonder ornament is monotonous?

It could not well be otherwise. But these conditions are not in the

nature of things. Ornamental design has subsided because no one asks

for, cares for, or encourages, ornament. It needs only to be in the

hands of an artist--not necessarily a Holbein, but just a Rhodian

potter, a Persian carpet weaver, a mediæval carver, or a nameless

glazier--to be worthy of its modest place in art.

Considering the costliness of good figure work and the absolute

worthlessness of bad, considering the way in which glass lends itself

especially to ornament, considering how in ornament the qualities most

necessary to decorative effect and most characteristic of the material

can be obtained, surely the wiser policy would be to do what can so

readily be done. When glass lends itself so kindly to ornament it seems

a sin to neglect it. Is it quite past praying for, that there may still

be a future for windows merely ornamental, which shall yet satisfy the

sense of beauty?

BOOK III.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF STYLE.

What are the characteristics of the various styles in glass? How does

one tell the period of a window? These are not questions that can be

fully answered in the short space of a chapter, which is all that can

here be devoted to it; but it may help those to whom a window tells

nothing of its date, briefly to mention the characteristics according to

which we class it as belonging to this period or that. With a view to

conciseness and to convenience of reference it will be best to catalogue

these characteristics rather than to describe them.

Any subdivision of glass into "styles" must be more or less arbitrary.

One style merges into the other, and the characteristics of each

overlap, so to speak. The most convenient lines of demarcation are the

centuries; for, as it happens, the changes in manner do take place more

or less towards the century end. The one broad distinction is between

Gothic and Renaissance.

Gothic may best be divided into three periods--viz., Thirteenth century

and before, Fourteenth century, and Fifteenth century and after.

_Thirteenth century glass_, commonly called "Early English," or, as the

case may be, "Early French," may as well be taken to include, for our

purpose, what little remains of twelfth century or Norman work. It

includes naturally Early German work, which is Romanesque and not Gothic

in character.

_Fourteenth century glass_ belongs to the Middle or Transitional Gothic

period. We call it "Decorated," for the inadequate reason that its

detail is naturalistic.

_Fifteenth century glass_, with us "Perpendicular," in France

"Flamboyant," in Germany "Interpenetrated," may, for convenience' sake,

be taken to include so much of Gothic as may be found lingering in the

sixteenth century.

The _Sixteenth century_ is more properly the period of the Renaissance.

It is better not to apply to it the Italian term "cinque-cento," since

the greater part of it is not of the purely Italian character which that

would imply.

_Seventeenth century glass_ is to be distinguished from that of the

sixteenth mainly inasmuch as it shows more markedly that decadence which

had already begun to set in before the year 1600. It may be conveniently

described as Late Renaissance.

[Illustration: 213. ST. REMI, REIMS.]

_Eighteenth century glass_ is not of sufficient account to be classed.

It will be seen that the dates above given do not quite coincide with

those of Winston, who gives Early English to 1280, Decorated to 1380,

and Perpendicular to 1530. There is here no thought of impugning his

accuracy; but it seems more convenient not to distinguish a new style

until the work begins markedly to differ from what had gone before,

especially when the marked difference happens conveniently to coincide

with the beginning of a new century; and Winston himself says of

Perpendicular work (and implies as much of Decorated) that the style

"can hardly be said to have become thoroughly established" until the

beginning of the new century.

We have thus a century of Middle Gothic, the fourteenth century. What

goes before is Early Gothic or Romanesque, as the case may be; what

comes after is Late Gothic, cooeval for a quarter of a century or more

with the Renaissance.

[Illustration: 214. DETAIL FROM MEDALLION WINDOWS AT CANTERBURY.]

EARLY GLASS.

The first thing which strikes one in Early Glass is either its deep

rich, jewelled colour (Canterbury, Chartres), or its sober, silvery,

greyness (Salisbury; Five Sisters, York). Exception to this alternative

occurs mainly in very early ornamental glass (_circa._ 1300--S. Denis;

S. Remi, Reims; Angers), in which white and colour are somewhat evenly

mixed. Early figure work occurs also occasionally in colour on a white

ground. The design of the richer class of windows consists largely of

figure work. The design of "grisaille" windows consists mainly of

ornamental pattern.

_Composition._--Rich windows are of three kinds: medallion windows, rose

windows, figure and canopy windows. Jesse windows form an exception.

(Chapter XXIX.)

1. _Medallion Windows_ are the most characteristic of the period

(Chapter XII.). These contain figure subjects, on a quite small scale,

within medallion shapes set in ornament (Canterbury, Chartres, etc.).

[Illustration: 215. MOSAIC DIAPER.]

In the very earliest medallion windows (Angers, Poitiers) the ordered

scheme of the medallioned window is sometimes interrupted by subjects

not strictly enclosed in medallions. Or else, perhaps (Chartres), the

subjects take the form of panels one above the other--they can scarcely

be called medallions--with little or no ornament between.

After the first few years of the thirteenth century, however, the figure

medallions (circles, quatrefoils, etc.) occur, as a rule, one above the

other throughout the length of the light, with perhaps a boss of

ornament between; the interstices being filled, in English glass with

ornamental scrollwork, in French with geometric diaper (opposite).

[Illustration: 216. DETAIL OF MEDALLION WINDOW, CHARTRES.]

In the broad windows of Norman churches (pages 123, 124) the medallions

are proportionately large, and are subdivided into four or five

divisions, each of which is devoted to a separate picture. In our

narrower lancet lights there is no occasion for that.

[Illustration: 217. BARS IN MEDALLION WINDOWS.]

The figures in medallion subjects are few and far apart, standing

comparatively clear-cut against a plain background (page 325); compacter

groups indicate a later period. Landscape is symbolised rather than

represented by a conventional tree or so; a town by an arch or two, a

battlemented wall, or the like.

Medallions are framed by lines of colour and beaded bands of white, but

they do not, as a rule, separate themselves very markedly from their

ornamental surroundings. The effect is one rather indeterminate glory of

intense colour.

Except in quite the earliest medallion windows, the strong iron bars

supporting the glass are, as a rule, bent (above), to follow the outline

of the medallions. That was done in no other period.

2. _Rose Windows_ occur mainly in French churches. They are a variation

upon the medallion window. A great Rose window (Chartres, Bourges, etc.)

may be regarded as a series of radiating medallion lights, with subjects

relatively fewer in number, and a greater proportion of pattern work.

Occasionally they consist of pattern work altogether. Smaller Roses (the

only form of tracery met with in quite Early work) contain very often a

central circular medallion subject, the cusps or foils round it being

occupied with ornament, all in rich colour, even though the lights below

it be in grisaille.

3. _Figure and Canopy Windows_ (page 40) are more proper to the

clerestory and triforium of a church, but they are not entirely confined

to a far-off position.

With regard to them it should be mentioned that figures under canopies,

sitting, or more often standing--one above the other in long, narrow

lights--occur throughout the Gothic periods, and even in Renaissance

glass. The characteristic thing about the Early ones is the stiffness

and comparative grotesqueness of the figures and the modesty of the

canopy. This last is of small dimensions. It may be merely a trefoiled

arch (page 40). Usually it is more architectural (page 46), gabled, with

a little roofing, and perhaps a small tower or two rising above, not

beautiful. It is in fairly strong colours. It is so little conspicuous

that it is not at first sight always distinguishable from the background

to the figure. Occasionally the figure has no canopy at all. The saint

stands front face, straight up in his niche, in a constrained and

cramped position, occupying its full width, which is obviously

insufficient. His feet rest in an impossible manner upon a label bearing

his name; or, if that be inscribed upon a label in his hand, or on the

background behind him, then he stands upon a little mound of green to

represent the earth (page 40).

Figure and canopy alike are archaic in design, and rudely drawn. It is

seldom that a figure subject on a smaller scale is introduced below the

standing figure, as was frequently the case in later work. Groups of

figures are characteristically confined to medallion windows.

_The Border_ is a feature in Early glass. It is broad. In medallion

windows it measures sometimes as much as one-fourth the width of the

light. It takes up, that is to say, perhaps half the area of the window.

It consists of foliated ornament similar in character to that between

the medallions. Very broad borders occasionally include smaller figure

medallions. In figure and canopy windows the borders are less, and

simpler. Sometimes they consist merely of broad bands of colour

interrupted by rosettes of other colours. Circumstances of proportion,

and so on, influence the width of the border; but a broad border is

characteristic of the Early period.

[Illustration: 218. LE MANS.]

In Rose windows the border is of less account, and is confined, as a

rule, to the outer ring of lights, or, it may be, to their outer edge.

_Detail._--Ornamental detail is severely conventional. In very Early

work (page 327) it has rather the character of Romanesque ornament, with

straplike stalks interlacing, often enriched by a beaded, zig-zag, or

other pattern, which may be either painted upon it or picked out of

solid brown.

Early in the thirteenth century foliage assumes the simpler Gothic form,

with cinquefoiled, or more often trefoiled, leafage (as here shown).

[Illustration: 219. CHARTRES.]

When it begins to be more naturalistic it is a sign of transition to the

Decorated period. In Germany something of Romanesque flavour lingered

far into the thirteenth century (page 330). There is properly no Early

Gothic period there. Heraldry is modestly introduced into Early glass.

The Donor is occasionally represented on quite a small scale in the

lower part of a window, his offering in his hand; or he is content to be

represented by a small shield of arms.

_Colour._--The glass in Early windows is uneven in substance, and,

consequently, in colour. This is very plainly seen in the "white" glass,

which shades off, according to its thickness, from greenish or

yellowish-white to bottle colour. The colour lies also sometimes in

streaks of lighter and darker. This is especially so in red glass. The

shades of colour most usually employed for backgrounds are blue and

ruby. White occurs, but only occasionally.

[Illustration: 220. AUXERRE.]

[Illustration: 221. PATCHWORK OF GRISAILLE, SALISBURY.]

The Early palette consists of:--

White, greenish, and rather clouded; red, rubylike, often streaky; blue,

deep sapphire to palest grey-blue, oftenest deep; turquoise-blue, of

quite different quality, inclining to green; yellow, fairly strong, but

never hot; green, pure and emerald-like, or deep and even low in tone,

but only occasionally inclining to olive; purple-brown, reddish or

brownish, not violet; flesh tint, actually lighter and more pinkish

shades of this same purple-brown. In very early work the flesh is

inclined to be browner.

[Illustration: 222. S. KUNIBERT, COLOGNE.]

It must be remembered that, though the palette of the first glaziers was

restricted, the proceeding of the glass-makers was so little scientific

that they had no very great control over their manufacture. No two pots

of glass, therefore, came out alike. Hence a great variety of shades of

glass, though produced from a few simple recipes. They might by accident

produce, once in a way, almost any colour. A pot of ruby sometimes

turned out greenish-black. Still, the colours above mentioned

predominate in Early work, and are clearly those aimed at.

_Workmanship._--The glazing of an Early window is strictly a mosaic of

small pieces of glass. Each separate colour in it is represented by a

separate piece of glass, or several pieces.

The great white eyes, for example, of big clerestory figures are

separate pieces of white glass, rimmed with lead, and held in place by

connecting strips of lead, which give them often very much the

appearance of spectacles (page 40). In work on a sufficiently large

scale the hair of the head and beard are also glazed in white, or

perhaps in some dark colour, distinct from the brownish-pink flesh tint

peculiar to the period (same page). No large pieces of glass occur.

[Illustration: 223. S. KUNIBERT, COLOGNE.]

Upon examination the window proves to be netted over with lines of lead

jointing, much of which is lost in the outlines of the design.

In large clerestory figures and the like, masses of one colour occur,

but they are made up of innumerable little bits of glass, by no means

all of one shade of colour; whence the richness in tone.

[Illustration: 224. S. JEAN-AUX-BOIS.]

_Painting._--In Early glass painting plays a very subordinate part. Only

one pigment is used, and that not by way of colour, but to paint out the

light and define form.

Details of figure and ornament are traced in firm strong brush lines.

Lines mark the exaggerated expression of the face, the close folds of

the spare drapery wrapped tightly round the figure, the serration of

foliage, and so on (pages 33, 37, 324). Lines, in the form of sweeping

brush strokes or cross-hatching, are used also to emphasise such shading

(not very much) as may be indicated in thirteenth century work, or

perhaps it should rather be said that the lines of shading are

supplemented very often by a coat of thin brown paint, not always very

easily detected on the deep-coloured glass of the period.

_White Windows, or "Grisaille."_--Grisaille assumes in France the

character of interlacing strapwork all in white. Sometimes this is quite

without paint (page 25). Plain work of the kind occurs also with us; but

it is dangerous to give a date to simple glazing. That at Salisbury

(page 26) is probably not of the very earliest.

In France, as with us, such strapwork is associated with foliated

detail, traced in strong outline upon the white glass and defined by a

background of cross-hatched lines which go for a greyer tint (above).

After the beginning of the thirteenth century, this strapwork is

sometimes in colour, or points of colour are introduced in the shape of

rosettes, etc., and in the border (pages 137, 138).

In England there is from the first usually a certain amount of coloured

glass in grisaille windows (pages 141, 332). Sometimes there is a

considerable quantity of it (Five Sisters, York); but it never appears

to be much. The effect is always characteristically grey and silvery.

[Illustration: 225. GRISAILLE, SALISBURY.]

So long as the painted foliage keeps closely within the formal lines

of strapwork, etc., it is, at all events in English glass, a sign of

comparatively early thirteenth century work.

Later in the century the scroll winds rather more freely about the

window (page 143).

The omission of the cross-hatched background and the more natural

rendering of the foliation (page 386) announce the approach to the

Decorated period.

Figure subjects in colour, planted, as it were, upon grisaille or quarry

lights (Poitiers, Amiens), and grisaille borders to windows with figures

in rich colour (Auxerre), are of exceptional occurrence.

Winston gives the year 1280 as the limit of the Early period, but there

seems no absolute reason for drawing the line at that date. The use of

stain, which was the beginning of a new departure in glass, does not

pronounce itself before the fourteenth century. It seems, therefore,

more convenient to include the last twenty years of the century in the

first period, and to call it thirteenth century, accepting the more

naturalistic type of foliage, when it occurs, as sign of transition;

for, apart from that, the later thirteenth century work is not very

markedly different from what was done before 1280.

FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

[Illustration: 226. S. URBAIN, TROYES.]

_Decorated or Intermediate Gothic._--Decorated glass grows

characteristically livelier in colour than Early glass; at first it

becomes warmer, owing to the use of more yellow, then lighter, owing to

the use of white. It does not divide itself so obviously into coloured

and grisaille.

The figure subjects include, as time goes on, more and more white glass.

The grisaille contains more colour.

Figures and figure subjects are now very commonly used in combination

with grisaille ornament in the same window. That is a new and

characteristic departure (page 159).

_Composition._--Figure windows occur, indeed, with little or no

ornament, in which case the subjects are piled one above the other, in

panels rather than medallions, or under canopies. When the canopies are

insignificant the result is one apparently compact mass of small figure

work, as deep and rich perhaps in colour (S. Sebald's, Nuremberg) as an

Early medallion window; but the colour is not so equally distributed; it

occurs more in patches.

Decorated canopies, however, are usually, after the first few years, of

sufficient size to assert themselves as very conspicuous patches of

rather brassy yellow, which in a window of several lights (and windows

now almost invariably consist of two or more lights) form a band (or if

there are two or more tiers of canopies, a series of bands) across the

window.

In the case of grisaille windows also, figures or figure subjects are

introduced either in the form of shaped panels or under little canopies,

and take the form of a band or bands of comparatively rich colour across

a comparatively light window.

When these canopies are themselves pronounced, the window shows

alternate bands of figures (rich), canopies (yellowish), and ornamental

pattern (whitish). In any case these horizontal bands across the window

mark departure from the earlier style.

_Canopies._--Canopies occur now over subjects as well as single figures.

The canopy is designed in flat elevation. Any indication of perspective

betokens the end of the period. It has broadish shafts, usually for the

most part white, which terminate in pinnacles (page 155). It has seldom

any architectural base: the figures stand upon grass or pavement. It has

usually a three-cusped arch, and above that a pointed gable decorated

with crockets and ending in a finial. Crockets and finial are usually in

strong, brassy yellow. Above are pinnacles and shrinework in white and

colour, including as a rule a fair amount of yellow.

It may rise to a great height, dwarfing the figure beneath it. This

occurs very especially in German work.

Sometimes the most conspicuous thing in the window is this

disproportionate canopy. Its very disproportion is characteristic of the

period.

In German work one great brassy canopy will frequently be found

stretching right across the several lights of the window, over-arching a

single subject. This triptich-like composition will occupy, perhaps,

two-thirds of the height of the window. The background behind the

pinnacles of this canopy may be either of one colour or of geometric

diaper in mosaic (elsewhere characteristic of the Early period),

finished off by a more or less arbitrary line--a cusped arch, for

instance--above which is white glass. This kind of canopy has, by way of

exception, an architectural base.

[Illustration: 227. CHÂLONS.]

Another German practice is to fill the window with huge circular subject

medallions, occupying the entire width of the window, and intersected by

the mullions.

Single-light windows have sometimes a central elongated medallion or

panel subject (without canopy), above and below which is ornamental

grisaille.

_Borders._--All windows have, as a rule, borders; but they are narrower

than in Early work.

Tracery lights, which now form a conspicuous part of the window, are, as

a rule, also each separately bordered, often with a still narrower

border in colour, or it may be only a line of colour.

Grisaille windows have usually coloured borders, foliaged or heraldic

(as above). The border does not necessarily frame the light at its base;

very often there is an inscription there. Between the coloured border

and the stonework is still invariably a marginal line of white glass.

[Illustration: 228. EARLY DECORATED FIGURE, TROYES.]

Sometimes, more especially in tracery, this white line is broad enough

to have a pattern painted upon it, in which case there is no coloured

border. Or this white border line may be enriched at intervals by

rosettes or blocks of colour upon it. Or, again, it may be in part

tinted with pale yellow stain.

Some such border is usually carried round each separate tracery light,

with the result that Decorated tracery may usually be distinguished at a

glance from later work by a certain lack of breadth about it.

There is no need to say more about Decorated tracery, seeing that the

idea of this epitome is to enable the amateur to form some opinion as to

the period of a window, and not to prompt the designer. The geometric

character of the stonework proclaims the period, and, unless there is

something in the design of the glass to indicate a later date, it may be

taken to belong to it. It cannot well be earlier if it fits.

_Stain._--Yellow stain is proof positive that the glass is not much

earlier than the fourteenth century, for it is only about that time that

the process of staining white glass yellow was discovered. The

occurrence therefore of white and colour upon the same piece of

glass--_i.e._, not glazed up with it, but stained upon it, is indicative

of Middle or Late Gothic.

Stained yellow is always purer and clearer than pot-metal; when pale it

inclines to lemon, when dark to orange. It is best described as golden.

In comparison with it pot-metal yellow is brownish or brassy.

This yellow stain warms and brightens Decorated windows, especially

those in grisaille. It naturally does away with a certain amount of

glazing, for colour is now not entirely mosaic. Bands of yellow ornament

in white windows, if stained, have lead on one side of them at most.

The hair of angels comes to be stained yellow upon white glass, which

towards the fifteenth century takes the place of the flesh tint.

_Figures._--Figures are still rather rudely drawn. They do not always

fill out their niches, which, indeed, frequently overpower them. In

attitude they pose and would be graceful. There is some swing about

their posture, but it is often exaggerated. Drapery becomes more

voluminous, fuller and freer, as shown opposite.

At the back of the figure hangs commonly a screen diapered

damask-fashion--the diaper often picked out of solid paint.

_Grisaille._--The distinguishing characteristics of Decorated grisaille

are fully described in the chapter dealing with it. It has usually a

coloured border. The foliated pattern no longer follows the lines of the

white or coloured strapwork, but it does not interlace with the straps

(pages 163, 333).

Coloured bosses adorn the centre of the grisaille panels. Frequently

these take the form of heraldic shields, planted, as it were, upon the

grisaille.

[Illustration: 229. S. OUEN, ROUEN.]

The practice of cross-hatching the background to grisaille foliage dies

out in France and England. In Germany it survives throughout the period;

or, it may be, the background is coated with solid paint, and the

cross-hatching is in white lines scratched out of that.

_Naturalism._--The foliation of the ornament is now everywhere

naturalistic. That is the surest sign of the period, at first the only

sign of change. In grisaille patterns and in coloured borders you can

identify the rose, the vine, the oak, the ivy, the maple, and so on

(pages 162, 166, 168).

In Germany, the design of ornamental windows consists often of

naturalistic foliage in white and colour upon a coloured ground, the

whole rich, but not so rich as Early glass (pages 171 _et seq._). There

also occur windows stronger in colour than ordinary grisaille, designed

on lines more geometric than those of French or English glass of the

period (page 170).

[Illustration: 230. 14TH CENTURY GERMAN.]

_Colour._--Glass gets less streaky, evener, and sometimes lighter in

tint, as time goes on. Flesh tint gets paler and pinker, and at last

white; "white" glass gets more nearly white.

Much blue and ruby continue to be used; but more green is introduced,

and more yellow, often the two in combination. In fact, there is a

leaning towards combinations of green and yellow, rather than the red

and blue so characteristic of Early glass. Green is frequently used for

backgrounds. The pure bright emerald-like green gives way to greens

inclining more to olive. In some German windows, green, yellow, and

purple-brown predominate. Occasionally, in the latter part of the

century, pale blue is modified by yellow stain upon it, which gives a

greenish tint.

_Painting._--Outline is still used; but it becomes more delicate.

Shading is still smeared on with a brush. But in the latter half of the

century it was the practice to stipple it, so as to soften the edges and

give it a granular texture. This is not quite the same thing as the

"stipple or matt shading" described on page 64, where the glass was

entirely coated with a stippled tint and the lights brushed out.

[Illustration: 231. WELLS.]

Decorated glass is plentiful in England and Germany, not so abundant in

France.

FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

_Perpendicular Glass._--By the fifteenth century the glass painter had

quite made up his mind in favour of more light. He makes use of glass in

larger sheets, and of lighter and brighter colour. His white is

especially purer than before, and he uses it in much greater

quantities.

[Illustration: 232. FIGURES, S. MARY'S, ROSS.]

So decidedly is this so, that a typical fifteenth century window strikes

you as a screen of silvery-white glass in which are set pictures or

patches of more or less brilliant, rather than intensely deep, colour.

_Design._--Design takes, for the most part, the form of figure and

canopy windows, schemed somewhat on the same lines as in the Decorated

period--the subjects, that is to say, cross the window in horizontal

bands.

But there is so much white glass in the canopy work--it is practically

all in white (as stone) touched with stain (as gilding)--and it so

entirely surrounds the figure subjects, that you do not so much notice

the horizontal bands (into which the subjects really fall when you begin

to dissect the design) as the mass of white in which they are embedded.

[Illustration: 233. PERPENDICULAR CANOPY.]

_Canopies._--The larger Perpendicular windows are now crossed by stone

transoms, so that very long lights do not, as a rule, occur.

Each light has a canopy, without any enclosing border (233). The canopy

stands, as it were, in the window opening, almost filling it, except

that, above, behind the topmost pinnacles, are glimpses of red or blue

background, not separated from the stonework by so much as a line of

white, heretofore of almost invariable occurrence. The hood and base of

canopy are shown in misunderstood perspective, indicating usually a

three-sided projection (page 342).

Its shafts and base rest upon the ground, on which are painted grass and

foliage, all in white and stain. When standing figures occupy the place

of honour, the base may very likely include a small subject,

illustrative of a scene in the life of the personage depicted above. Or

the base may be a sort of pedestal (page 179).

The figures usually stand upon a chequered mosaic pavement in black and

white, or white and stain, not very convincingly foreshortened (page

185).

In the canopy may be little windows of pot-metal colour, and in the base

perhaps a spot or two of colour; but, whatever the amount of pot-metal

(never much) or of stain (often a good deal), the effect is always

silvery-white; and as time goes on the canopy becomes more solidly and

massively white. The groining at the back of the niche just above the

figures is a feature of the full-blown style. The vault is usually

stained, less often glazed in pot-metal. There is more scope for this

coloured groining in windows where the canopy runs through several

lights. That is more common in France and Germany than with us. In

English work each light has, as a rule, its own canopy.

In France, and more especially in Germany, the canopies are not seldom

in yellow instead of white, golden in effect instead of silvery.

Sometimes white and yellow canopies alternate (Nuremberg, Munich). The

German canopy is often more florid, and less distinctly architectural

than the English.

Perpendicular canopies are more in proportion to the figures under them

than Decorated. Usually they are important enough to be a feature in the

window, if not the feature. Sometimes, however, they are quite small and

insignificant (East window, York), in which event the subjects appear

more like a series of small panels, one above the other. In that case

there is likely to be a large amount of white glass in the subjects

themselves (pages 252, 339). Possibly the background is white. In any

case, there is usually a fair share of white glass in the drapery of

figures. The faces also are almost invariably white, often with stained

hair; and this white flesh is characteristic of the period.

Until the turn of the century, landscape or architectural accessories

are, to a large extent, in white and stain, against a blue or ruby

ground.

Variety of colour in the background (or a further amount of white) is

introduced by means of a screen of damask behind the figure, shoulder

high, above which alone appears the usual blue or ruby background,

diapered. The screen may be of any colour: purple-brown is not uncommon.

When scale permits, the damask pattern is often glazed in colours, or in

white and stain upon pot-metal yellow.

[Illustration: 234. FIGURE AND CANOPY WINDOWS, BOURGES.]

[Illustration: 235. FAIRFORD.]

Heraldic shields are more conspicuous than ever in the design. Donors

and their patron saints are often important personages in the foreground

of the picture.

_Tracery._--Tracery lights being now more of the same shape as the

lights below, the glass is designed on much the same plan. That is to

say, they also contain little figures under canopies. These are often

entirely, or almost entirely, in white and stain, only here and there a

point of colour showing in the background, more especially about their

heads.

Trefoiled, quatrefoiled, three-sided, or other openings not adapted to

canopy work, have usually foliated ornament in white and stain, with

border line of white and stain, the background painted in solid brown.

Inscribed scrolls and emblematical devices in white and stain also occur

in the smaller tracery lights.

_Grisaille._--Grisaille takes almost invariably the form of quarries.

The pattern of the quarries consists ordinarily of just a rosette or

some such spot in the centre of the glass, delicately outlined and

filled in with stain. A band of canopied figures sometimes crosses

quarry windows, the pinnacles of the canopies breaking into the quarries

above. Figures occur also often in white and stain, against a quarry

ground, without canopy, standing perhaps on a bracket, or on a mere

label or inscription band (York Minster). Occasionally we get subjects

altogether in white and stain, without quarry glazing. In Germany

unpainted roundels, or circular discs of white glass, take the place of

quarries (page 292).

_Detail of Ornament._--The detail of Perpendicular foliage is no longer

very naturalistic; it has often the appearance of being embossed or

otherwise elaborated. It is most commonly in white with yellow stalks.

_Borders._--The border is no longer the rule, except in quarry windows.

It is now very rarely used to frame canopies. Where it occurs it is

usually in the form of a "block" border, differing only from that of

the Decorated period by the character of the painted detail. Borders all

in white and stain also occur.

The border does not follow the deeply cut foils of the window head.

These are occupied each by its separate round of glass painted with a

crown, star, lion's head, or other such device, in white and stain,

against which the coloured border stops.

_Stain._--Abundant use of beautiful golden stain is typical of the

period. Stain is always varied, sometimes shading off by subtle degrees

from palest lemon to deep orange. The deliberate use of two distinct

tones of stain, as separate tints, say of a damask pattern, argues a

near approach to the sixteenth century. So does the use of stain upon

pot-metal yellow.

Other signs of the mature style are:--

1. The very careful choice of varied and unevenly coloured glass to

suggest shading or local colour.

2. The use of curious pieces of accidentally varied ruby to represent

marble, and the like.

3. The abrasion of white spots or other pattern on flashed blue (the

abrasion of white from ruby begins with the second half of the century).

4. The introduction of distant landscape in perspective, and especially

the representation of clouds in the sky, and other indications of

attempted atmospheric effect.

5. The treatment of several lights as one picture space, without canopy.

_Colour._--White glass is cooler and more silvery, more purely white.

Red glass is less crimson, often approaching more to a scarlet colour.

Blue glass becomes lighter, greyer; sometimes it is of steely quality,

sometimes it approaches to pale purple. More varieties of purple-brown

and purple are used. Purer pink occurs.

_Drawing._--In the fifteenth century the archaic period of drawing is

outgrown. Figures are often admirably drawn, more especially towards the

end of the period, at which time the folds of drapery are made much of.

_Painting._--Painting is much more delicate. The method adopted is that

of stippling (page 64).

Figure and ornament alike are carefully shaded, quarry patterns and

narrow painted borders excepted.

[Illustration: 236. SCRAPS OF LATE GOTHIC DETAIL.]

For a long while painters hesitated to obscure the glass much; they

shaded very delicately, and used hatchings, and a sort of scribble of

lines, to deepen the shadows. As a result the shading appears sometimes

weak, but the glass is always brilliant.

[Illustration: 237. FAIRFORD.]

With the progress of the century stronger stipple shading was used; more

roundness and greater depth of shadow was thus achieved, at

proportionate cost of silvery whiteness and brilliancy in the glass.

The characteristic of the later technique was that it depended less upon

mosaic, and more upon paint.

Leads were not used unless they were constructionally unavoidable; and

it was sought to avoid them. The nimbus, for example, was glazed in one

piece with the head (page 189), stained perhaps, or with a pattern in

stain upon it, to distinguish it from the face; or it showed white

against the yellow hair.

From the lead lines alone of an Early window, and of many a Decorated

one, you could read the design quite plainly. The later the period the

less that is so. By the end of the fifteenth century the lead lines

convey very often little or no idea of the picture, which they hold

together but no longer outline. Canopies, for example, are sometimes

leaded in square quarries, without regard to the drawing, except where

that must be (page 342).

A pretty sure sign of period is afforded by the way the leads give, or

do not give, the design. Exceptions are mentioned on page 73. Where

leads seem to occur more or less as it happens, as though they might

have been an after-thought, that is most positive proof of Late work.

SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Renaissance glass does not, like Gothic, divide itself into periods. It

was at its best when it was still in touch with mediæval tradition.

[Illustration: 238. FRENCH RENAISSANCE, MOSAIC.]

The finest work in the new manner must be ascribed therefore to the

first half of the sixteenth century. After that its merits belong more

to picture than to glass.

Apart from details of architecture, ornament (as above), costume and so

on, which at once proclaim the style, it is difficult to distinguish

between Gothic and Renaissance glass of the very early sixteenth

century. The distinction does not in fact exist; for Gothic traditions

survive even in work belonging, according to the evidence of its detail,

to the Renaissance.

_Design._--Design takes now mainly the pictorial direction. It spreads

itself more invariably over the whole face of the window. The canopy,

for example, is seldom confined to a single light.

_Canopies._--The canopy scheme is at first not widely removed from

Gothic precedent, although the detail may be pronouncedly Renaissance.

It frames the subject as before; but it is less positively white. It is

enriched with much more yellow stain; and the mass of white and stain is

broken by festoons and wreaths of foliage, fruit, and flowers,

medallions with coloured ground, ribbons, or other such features, in

pot-metal colour. A simple François Ier canopy is given on page 349.

Sometimes these canopies consist rather of arabesque ornament than of

anything that can properly be called architectural, in white and yellow

(page 350), or perhaps all in yellow, upon a ground of pot-metal colour

(page 205); that is to say, the setting out of the window and the

technique employed are absolutely Gothic, and perhaps not even very late

Gothic, whilst the detail is altogether Renaissance in design. This

mosaic manner (as at Auch) bespeaks, of course, the early years of the

Renaissance.

Another sure sign of lingering Gothic influence is where the round arch

is fringed with cusping.

The more typically Renaissance form of design is where a huge monumental

structure fills the greater part of the window, not canopying a

subject, but having in front of it a figure group (Transept of S.

Gudule, page 71). The foreground figures stand out in dark relief

against the architecture and the sky beyond, seen through the central

arch. Into this grey-blue merges very often a distant landscape, painted

in great part upon the blue, and really seeming to recede into the

distance. The effect of distance is largely obtained by contrast with

the strong shadow of the soffits and sides of the arch seen in

perspective.

We have here four characteristics of Renaissance glass:--

1. The monumental canopy with figures in front of it.

2. Strong contrast of light and shade.

3. Fairly accurate perspective in the architecture.

4. Something like atmospheric effect in the landscape, which is painted

more or less upon the sky.

When in a canopy the shadowed portions of the architecture are glazed in

deep-coloured glass (purple, as a rule), and not darkened by painting,

it indicates the early part of the century. The canopy, instead of being

arched, ends sometimes in a rich frieze and cornice (Church of Brou).

When it is in two stages, enclosing two subjects, the lower one has

naturally this horizontal entablature (Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, S.

Gudule).

A less usual treatment is where the figures do not occupy the

foreground, but are seen through the arch. The subject occupies, in

fact, very much the position of a painted altar-piece in a carved stone

altar.

Foreground figures prove often to be donors and their patron saints. The

head of the window above the great architectural canopy, as it is

convenient to call it, is usually of plain white glass, glazed in

rectangular or diamond quarries (page 71).

A coloured ground above a Renaissance canopy indicates Gothic tradition,

and an Early period therefore (S. Jacques, Liège).

More to the latter half of the century belong the pictorial compositions

in which architecture, more or less proper to the subject, fills great

part of the window, the foremost arches adapting themselves, sometimes,

to the stonework. In this case the architecture is in white glass, more

or less obscured by painted shadow; and pot-metal colour occurs only in

the figures, where it is perhaps quite rich, in occasional columns of

coloured marble, and in a peep of pale blue distance seen through some

window or other opening (page 213).

[Illustration: 239. FRANÇOIS IER CANOPY, LYONS.]

The grey-blue distance has often figures as well as landscape and

architecture painted upon it; to represent verdure it is stained green.

Blue is more usual than white as a ground; but that also occurs,

similarly painted. The not very usual landscape in white, with a blue

sky above, in the windows of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, belongs

to the early part of the century.

_Tracery._--In small windows the subject, or its canopy, is often

carried up into the tracery lights (page 368), or the architecture ends

abruptly and horizontally at the springing of the arch, and the heads of

the lights are treated as part of the tracery.

Tracery lights often contain figure subjects. Very commonly they are

occupied by figures of angels robed in white and stain, or in rich

colour, or with colour only in their wings, playing upon musical

instruments, bearing emblems, scrolls, and so on, all on a coloured

ground (page 280). There occur also, but less frequently, cherubic

heads, portrait medallions, badges, twisted labels, or other devices,

upon a ground of ruby, pale blue, purple, or purple-brown. A purple or

purplish background is of the period.

Coloured grounds are used without borders. White grounds are usually

diapered with clouds.

There is no very distinctive treatment of rose windows. They are filled

as pictorially as they well can be. They contain, perhaps, a central

subject and in the outer lights angels, cherubs, and the like, much as

in other tracery lights.

_Ornament._--The detail of their ornament is a ready means of

distinguishing Renaissance windows. In place of Gothic leafage we have

scrollwork of the marked arabesque or grotesque character derived from

Italy. It needs no description.

Screens and draperies have often patterns in white and stain on ruby and

other coloured grounds, produced by abrading the red and painting and

staining the white thus exposed. The process may be detected by the

absence of intervening lead between the white or yellow and the deep

ground.

Other damask patterns are stained on the coloured glass without

abrasion, yellow on blue giving green, on purple olive, and so on.

Ornamental windows scarcely go beyond quarry work, with a border of

white and stain. Except in quarry windows, borders are seldom used.

Grisaille windows scarcely occur. The little subjects in white and stain

painted upon a single piece of glass, usually circular and framed in

quarries or in a cartouche set in plain glazing (page 352), belong to a

class by themselves.

[Illustration: 240. CHURCH OF S. PETER, COLOGNE.]

_Technique._--In many respects the technique of the Renaissance glass

painter is only a carrying further of the later Gothic means. He uses

more and more white glass, employing it also as a background; he uses

more shades of coloured glass, especially pale blues, greens, and

purples; he chooses his glass more carefully for specific purposes; he

uses more coated glass, and abrades it; he makes greater use of stain,

staining upon all manner of colours--ruby, blue, purple, green--and even

painting in stain, and picking out high lights upon it in white. He

paints delicate work more delicately. Flesh-painting he carries to a

very high point of perfection, more especially in the portraits of

Donors. In strengthening his shadows he eventually gets them muddy. At

first he used to hatch them to get additional strength; eventually he

was not careful always so much as to stipple them. He uses often a

warmer brown pigment for flesh painting, and by-and-by resorts to a

quite reddish tint by way of local colour; he uses large pieces of

glass when he can, and glazes his backgrounds and other large surfaces

in rectangular panes. Above canopies he comes to use pure white glass,

as if to suggest that the canopy is solid, and beyond only atmosphere.

The one quite new departure in sixteenth century technique was the use

of enamel colour (see Chapter VIII.). That began to come into use

towards the middle of the century. When you detect the least touch of

enamel colour in a window, other than the pinkish flesh tint, you may

suspect that it belongs to the second half of the century; when it

seriously affects the design and colour of the window, you may be sure

it does. But it is not until quite the end of the century that mosaic

anywhere practically gives way to enamel painting.

[Illustration: 241. S. JEAN, TROYES, 1678.]

The sixteenth century, therefore, includes, broadly speaking, all that

is best in Renaissance glass and much that is already on the decline.

There is a tide in the affairs of art; and after the full flood of the

Renaissance, sweeping all before it, glazing and glass painting sank to

the very lowest ebb, out of sight in fact of craftsmanship. Only here

and there, by way of rare exception, was good or interesting work any

longer done,--as for example at Troyes, where good traditions, piously

preserved in a family of exceptionally skilful glass painters, were

followed long after they were elsewhere extinct.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

You may recognise seventeenth century work not so much by any new

departure in design (except that it aims more and more at the effect of

an oil picture, and that the portrait of the Donor and his family

constitutes the picture) as by its departure from the old methods, the

methods above described; by the introduction of pure white glass, glazed

in geometric pattern, in the upper half of the window or, it may be, as

a background; by the use of enamel paint instead of coloured glass; by

the abuse of heavy shading (in the vain attempt to get chiaroscuro), and

by a loss, consequently, of the old translucency and brilliancy; by the

aggressiveness of the lead lines (now that it is sought to do as much as

possible without them); by the adoption of thin-coloured glass, toned by

paint, instead of deep pot-metal; by the occurrence of whole panes of

glass coated with solid paint; by the decay of the enamel; and by the

general dilapidation of the window.

[Illustration: 242. CERTOSA IN VAL D'EMA.]

The unlearned must not be misled by the shabbiness of a window, by the

breakages, the disfiguring leads which represent repair, the peeling off

of the paint, and so on, into the supposition that these are signs of

antiquity. On the contrary, the very method of its making was the saving

of Early glass, and Late work owes its vicissitudes largely to the

mistaken process adopted in its execution,--by which you may know it.

It would be beyond the scope of a book about glass to go more thoroughly

into the characteristics of style generally. Enough to indicate what

more especially concerns the subject in hand.

Without some slight acquaintance with the course of art, it will perhaps

be difficult to trace the development of glass design. Historical or

antiquarian knowledge of any kind will make it more easy. Not merely the

character of ornament or architecture, but the details of lettering,

costume, heraldry, give evidence in abundance to those who can read it;

but it is with art and craftsmanship that we have here to do.

The data given in this chapter and throughout are derived from the study

of old work. Winston and other authorities have been referred to only to

corroborate impressions gained by personal experience,--the experience

only of a designer, a workman, a lover of glass, professing to no more

learning than a student must in the course of study acquire.

Nevertheless these few notes on what is characteristic in design and

workmanship, may, it is hoped, be helpful to artists, craftsmen,

students, and lovers of art, and perhaps sufficient for their guidance.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

STYLE IN MODERN GLASS (A POSTSCRIPT).

It is easy, and it is only too common a thing, for the designer to

depend for inspiration over much upon old work; but until he knows what

has been done he is not fully equipped for his trade.

Moreover, a workman skilled only in his craft may be prolific in good

work: one, on the other hand, learned only in archæology, is, in the

nature of things, sterile. He may know as much about old glass as

Winston, and fail as utterly even to direct design a-right as he did at

Glasgow. The Munich windows there are glaring evidence as to what a

learned antiquary and devoted glass-lover can countenance. Too surely

the fire of archæological zeal warps a man's artistic judgment.

What, then, about historic style? Are we to disregard it in our work?

That question may be answered by another: What about old work? Old work,

it is argued, should be our guide. Well, old work preaches no adherence

to past styles. It went its own way, in delightful unconsciousness that

the notion could ever occur to any one deliberately to go back to a

manner long since out of vogue; and when the idea of a Renaissance did

occur to the artist, he very soon made it something quite different from

the thing he set out to revive--if ever that was his deliberate

intention.

It is too lightly assumed that "the styles" are there, ready made for

us, and that all we have to do is to make our choice between them, and

take the nearest to a fit we can find. So many of us only learn to copy,

whereas the whole use of copying is to learn. Artists study style for

information, not authority.

The truth is, no style of old glass is fashioned to our use. Early

Gothic glass has most to teach us with regard to the mosaic treatment of

the material, and perhaps also about breadth and simplicity of design;

but when it comes to figure drawing and painting, here is surely no

model for a nineteenth century draughtsman. Renaissance work has most to

teach in the way of painting and pictorial treatment; but it is not an

exemplar of workmanlike and considerate handling of glass.

Because Early work was badly drawn, because Decorated was

ill-proportioned, because Perpendicular was enshrined in

stone-suggesting canopy work, because Renaissance was apt to depend too

much upon finish, because seventeenth century work was overburdened with

paint; must a man, therefore, according to the style of the building for

which his work is destined, make it rude, misproportioned, stonelike,

ultra-finished, or over-painted?

It happens that Early figure work in glass was mostly in deep rich

colour. Are we to have no figures, therefore, in grisaille? It happens

that later glass was, at its best, delicate and silvery in effect. Are

we, therefore, to have no rich windows any more? Thirteenth century

pictures were diminutive in scale. Are we to have no larger pictures

ever? Sixteenth century subjects spread themselves over the whole

window. Are we never to frame our glass pictures? And as to that frame,

are we to choose once and for all the ornamental details of this period

or that, or the formula of design adopted at a given time?

Whether in the matter of technique or treatment, of colour or design, no

one style of old glass is enough for us. What does an historic style

mean? Partly it means that during such and such years such and such

forms were in fashion; partly it means that by that time technique had

reached such and such a point, and no further. Must we rest there? If at

a certain period in the history of design the scope of the glass painter

was limited, his art rude, shall we limit ourselves in a like manner? If

at another it was debased, ought we to degrade our design, just because

the building into which our work is to go is of that date, or pretends

to be? It was the merest accident that in the thirteenth century drawing

was stiff and design more downright than refined, that the appliances of

the glazier were simple, and the technique of the painter imperfect. It

was an accident that silver stain was not discovered until towards the

middle of the fourteenth century, that the idea of abrading

colour-coated glass did not occur to any one until nearly a century

later, that the use of the glass-cutter's diamond is a comparatively

modern invention, and so on.

Out of the very scarcity of the craftsman's means good came; and there

is a very necessary lesson to us in that; but to throw away what newer

and more perfect means we have (all his knowledge is ours, if we will)

is sheer perversity.

To affect a style is practically to adopt the faults and follies of the

period. If you are bent upon making your glass look like sixteenth

century work, you glaze it in squares, and introduce enamel. To treat it

mosaically would be not to make it characteristic enough of the period

for your pedant, notwithstanding that sixteenth century glass was, by

exception, treated in a glazier-like fashion.

Should one, then, it may be asked, take the exception for model? The

answer to that is: take the best, and only the best. It is no concern of

the artist whether it be exceptional or of every-day occurrence; some

kinds of excellence can never be common. Is it good? That is the

question he has to ask himself.

With regard to the use of the forms peculiar to a style--Gothic Tracery

or Renaissance Arabesque--that is very much a question of a man's

temperament. Has he any sympathy with them? Does that seem to him the

thing worth doing? If his personal bias be that way, who shall say him

nay? Assume even that the conditions of the case demand Decorated or

Italian detail, it does not follow that they demand precisely the

treatment of such detail found in the fourteenth or the sixteenth

century.

The style of a building is not to be ignored. To put, nowadays, in a

thirteenth or fourteenth century church windows in the style of the

fifteenth or sixteenth would be absurd; to put in a fifteenth or

sixteenth century church windows in the style of the thirteenth or

fourteenth, more foolish still. But it does not follow that in a church

of any given century, the modern windows should be as nearly as possible

what would have been done in that century.

No man in his senses, no artist at all events, ever denied that the

designer of a stained glass window must take into consideration the

architecture of the building of which his work is to form part. The only

possible question is as to what consideration may be due to it.

The archæologist (and perhaps sometimes the architect) claims too much.

Certainly he claims too much when he pretends that the designer of a

window should confine himself to the imitation of what has already been

done in glass belonging to the period of the building, or of the period

which the building affects. Why should the modern designer submit to be

shackled by obsolete traditions? What is his sin against art, that he

should do this dreary penance, imposed by architectural or

ecclesiastical authority? And what good is to come of it?

The unfortunate designer of modern glass is asked to conform both to the

technique and to the design of glass such as was executed at the period

to which belongs the building where his glass is to go, no matter how

inadequate the one or the other, or both, may be. So far as technique is

concerned, it can scarcely be questioned that the only rational thing to

do, is to do the best that can be done under the circumstances.

That is equally the thing to aim at in design, simply one's level best.

It seems strange that there should be two opinions on the subject. A

building of some centuries past (or in that style) is to be filled with

nineteenth century glass. Choose your artist: a man whose work has

something in common with the sentiment of the period of the building, a

man with education enough to appreciate the architecture and what it

implies, with modesty enough to think of the decorative purpose of his

work and not only of his cleverness; let such a man express himself in

his own way, controlled only by the conditions of the case; and there

would be little likelihood that his work would, in the result, shock

either the feelings or the taste of any but a pedant--and if art is to

conform to the taste of the pedant, well, it is time the artist shut up

shop. Why will men of learning and research discount, nay, wipe out, the

debt art owes to them, by claiming what is not their due?

Even though it were necessary or desirable that we should restrict

ourselves to what might have been done in the thirteenth century or in

the sixteenth, that would not argue that we must do only what was done.

Surely we may be allowed to do what the men of those days might

conceivably have done had they possessed our experience. Surely we need

not go for inspiration to the glass of a period when glass was

admittedly ill-understood, inadequate, poor, bad. It is quite certain

that the thirteenth century workmen did not realise all that might be

done in painted glass, quite certain that those of the seventeenth did

not appreciate what might be done in mosaic glass. It would be sheer

folly to paint no better than a thirteenth century glazier, because our

window was destined for Salisbury Cathedral, to make no more use of the

quality inherent in glass than was made by a painter of the seventeenth

century, because it was designed for St. Paul's. Those who are really

familiar with old work know that, even in periods of decline, work was

sometimes done which showed no falling away from good tradition. You may

find Renaissance glass almost as mosaic in treatment as thirteenth

century work. But because that was comparatively rare, because the

average work of the period was much less satisfactorily treated, modern

Renaissance must, it is absurdly assumed, be on the same unsatisfactory

lines.

Suppose we want modern Italian Renaissance, and, further, that we wish

not only to retain the character of Renaissance detail but to get good

glass, suppose also that we do not want forgery,--the thing to do would

be, to inspire oneself at the very best sources of Italian

ornament--carving, inlay, goldsmith's work, embroidery, no matter what

(ornament is specifically mentioned because it is in ornament that the

tyranny of style is most severely exercised), and to translate the forms

thence borrowed into the best glass we can do. That, of course, is not

quite so easy as appropriation, wholesale; it implies research,

judgment, a thorough knowledge of glass; but it would certainly lead, in

capable hands, to nobler work, and work which might yet be in the

Italian spirit. The danger is that it would clash, not with Renaissance

feeling, but with preconceived ideas as to what should be.

Our affectations of old style would be much more really like old work if

they pretended less to be like it. Had the old men lived nowadays they

would certainly have done differently from what they did.

An artist in glass cannot safely neglect to study old work, more

especially in so far as it bears upon modern practice. It is for him to

realise, for example, what artistic good there was in early archaic

design, what qualities of colour and so on came of mosaic treatment,

what delicacy is due to the liberty of the later Gothic glass painter,

what fresh charm there was in the more pictorial manner of the

Cinque-Cento, and at what cost was this bought. Questions such as these

are much more to the point than considerations of the date at which some

new departure may have been made.

The several systems on which a window design was set out, the various

methods of execution--mosaic and paint, pot-metal and enamel,

smear-shading and stipple, cross-hatching and needle point, matting and

diapering, staining and abrading--all these things he has to study, not

as indices of period, but that he may realise the intrinsic use and

value of each, that he may deduce from ancient practice and personal

experience a method of his own.

Doubtful and curious points concern the antiquary not the artist. He had

best keep to the broad highway of craftsmanship, not wander off into the

byeways of archæology. Typical examples concern him more than rare

specimens--examples which mark a stage in the progress of art, and about

which there is no possibility of learned dispute. He wants to know what

has been done in order to judge what may be done, and especially he

wants to know the best that has been done.

The problem is how to produce the best glass we can in harmony with the

architecture to which it belongs, but without especial regard to what

happens to have been done during the period to which the architecture of

the building belongs. We may even inspire ourselves at the sources of

sixteenth century Italian art, and yet in no wise follow in the

footsteps of the glass painters of the period, who were more or less off

the track; we may set ourselves to do, not what they did (glass was not

their strong point), but what they might have done. There, if you like,

is an ideal worthy of the best of us.

If we pretend to be craftsmen we must do our work in the best way we

know. If we are men, let us at least be ourselves. Let us work in the

manner natural to us. If we undertake to decorate a building with a

style of its own, let us acknowledge our obligation to it; let us be

influenced by it so far as to make our work harmonious with

it--harmonious, that is to say, in the eyes of an artist, not

necessarily of a savant. Evidence of modernity is no sin, but a merit,

in modern work. To see how a man adapted his design to circumstances not

those of his own day, gives interest to work. We never wander so wide of

the old mediæval spirit as when we pretend to be mediæval or play at

Gothic. True style, as craftsmen know, consists in the character which

comes of accepting quite frankly the conditions inherent in our work.

CHAPTER XXIX.

JESSE WINDOWS.

The subjects depicted in stained glass tell the story of the Church, or

preach its doctrine. Scenes from the Old Testament, from the Life of

Christ, from the legends of the Saints, and so on, recur from the

earliest Gothic times, and throughout the period of the Renaissance.

These pictures accommodate themselves to the current plans of design, or

the plan of design is chosen to suit them, as the case may be.

There is one subject, however, occurring from the first in glass, which

does not fall into any of the usual schemes of design, and which, in

fact, differs so entirely from any of them, that it forms a class of

design apart. The subject, in fact, by way of exception to the rule, not

merely affects but determines the decorative form of the window. This

subject is the Descent of Christ--in short, the genealogical tree of the

Saviour; and the window devoted to its delineation is called a Jesse

window. Much freer and more varied scope for composition was offered by

this piece of church heraldry than the ordinary medallion or figure and

canopy window afforded, and the glazier turned it early to exceedingly

decorative use. The tree is shown issuing, as it were, from the loins of

Jesse. It bears his descendants, or rather a very arbitrary selection of

them (it is as well not to inquire too strictly as to their legitimate

right to be there), ending in the Virgin and the Saviour.

The earliest arrangement of a Jesse window is as follows: at the base is

the recumbent figure of Jesse; the straight stem of the tree, proceeding

from him, is almost entirely hidden by a string of figures, one above

the other, occupying the centre part of the window, and represented, for

the most part, as Kings; above them is the Virgin, also crowned; and in

the arch of the window sits our Lord in Majesty, surrounded by seven

doves, to signify the gifts of the Spirit. It is not perhaps quite

clear upon what these figures sit. They hold on with both hands to

branches of highly conventional Romanesque foliage, springing from the

main stem, and occupying the space about the figures in very ornamental

fashion. A series of half medallions on each side of this central design

contain little figures of attendant prophets--in a sense, the spiritual

ancestors of the Saviour. All this is in the deepest and richest mosaic

colour, as in the beautiful bluish Jesse window at the West end of the

cathedral at Chartres, which belongs to about the middle of the twelfth

century. Very much the same kind of thing occurs at Le Mans and

elsewhere.

Later the tree more often branched out into loops, forming oval or

vesical-shaped spaces, in which the figures sat, as may be seen on page

362. The ground of the window is in that case blue, the background of

the figure ruby. Had it been red the figures would probably have been

upon blue. This particular instance, by the way, is said to be of the

twelfth century, although the ornament has more the character of

thirteenth century work. You see also the doves referred to encircling

the figure sitting in Majesty, and the figures attendant upon the

Virgin. Sometimes these are prophets, sometimes angels; sometimes they

stand in little canopy niches, sometimes they are in the midst of the

foliage. The fragment from Salisbury on page 117 formed most probably

part of a Jesse window. The symbolic doves have often each a nimbus. A

single dove represents, of course, the Holy Ghost.

A rather suggestive variation upon the orthodox Early scheme occurs in a

window at Carcassonne. Each of the three lights is bordered with a

rather geometric pattern. Within the border the central light is

designed much on the usual lines: Jesse recumbent below, and above the

figures of Kings, sitting each in his own little vesical-shaped space

formed by the growth of the tree. In the sidelights, however, the

Prophets are provided with the very simplest canopies, one above the

other.

An interesting arrangement is to be found in the clerestory of the

cathedral at Tours, where the central light of a window has a Tree of

Jesse, with the usual oval compartments, corresponding with

hexagon-shaped medallions in the two sidelights, in which are depicted

scenes presumably appropriate to the subject; it is difficult to make

them out with any certainty.

[Illustration: 243. PART OF EARLY JESSE WINDOW, MUSÉE DES ARTS

DÉCORATIFS, PARIS.]

Occasionally what seems at first sight a medallion window resolves

itself, as at S. Kunibert, Cologne, into a kind of genealogical tree,

enclosing subjects illustrative of the descent of Christ. The rather

unusual combination of medallion and vine shown below, also German, is

of rather later date.

[Illustration: 244. FREIBURG.]

In the fourteenth century the tree naturally becomes a vine, usually in

colour upon a blue or ruby ground, extending beyond the limits of a

single light, and crossing not only the mullions, but the borders

(which, by the way, often confuse the effect of a Decorated Jesse

window). The vine extends also very often into the tracery, where sits

the Virgin with the Infant Christ. The figure of our Lord is always, of

course, the topmost feature of the tree--in the arms of the Virgin, in

the lap of the Father, or sitting in Majesty. A variation upon ordinary

practice occurs where the Father supports a crucifix. The figure of

Jesse naturally, as at Shrewsbury (page 241), extends across several

lights.

Occasionally a figure and canopy window proves to be also a Jesse

window--a vine, that is to say, winds about the figures, and connects

them with the figure of Jesse; but this combination of canopy work with

tree work (as at Wells, some of the detail of which is given overleaf)

is confused and confusing. A much happier combination of figures under

canopies with tree work occurs in a sixteenth century window at S.

Godard, Rouen, which has at the base a series of five figures, above

whom spreads the tree, its roots appearing above the head of the central

one, who proves to be Jesse.

By the fifteenth century the vine is rather more conventionally treated.

It is usually in white and stain upon a coloured ground, or, if the

leaves are green, the stems are white and stain. The figures also have

more white in their drapery. In the earlier part of the century the main

stem branches very often in an angular manner so as to form six-sided

bowers for the figures, framing them, perhaps, in a different colour

from the general groundwork of the window. Or the various lights of the

window may have alternately a blue and a ruby ground. It is rarely that

two figures are shown in the width of a single light, either in separate

compartments or grouped in one.

[Illustration: 245. PART OF A JESSE WINDOW, WELLS.]

Later the tree, oftenest in white and stain, branches more freely, not

twisting itself any longer into set shapes or obvious compartments. The

figures are, as it were, perched amongst its branches. In French and

German work the tree, towards the sixteenth century, is not so

necessarily a vine. It may take the form more of scrollwork, white or

yellow, and the personages in its midst may be only demi-figures,

issuing possibly from vase-like flowers or flower-like ornament.

That is so in a remarkably fine window in the clerestory of the

cathedral at Troyes (three lights of which are shown on page 366), where

the figures no longer occupy the centre of the lights, but are scattered

about from side to side, balanced in a very satisfactory way by their

names writ large upon the background. This characteristic lettering

gives not only interesting masses of white or yellow on the ruby ground,

but horizontal lines of great value to the composition. In the lower

part of the window a separate screen of richest yellow marks off the

figure of Jesse, and at the same time distinguishes the Donors, together

with their family and their armorial bearings, from the merely

scriptural part of the design. In earlier windows, it should have been

stated, prominence is sometimes given to the really more important

personages by drawing them to a much larger scale, or by showing them

full-length when the others are only half-length, or by draping them all

in white and stain, whilst the rest are in colours not so strongly

relieved against the ground.

There are two other rather unusual Jesse windows at Troyes, both of Late

Gothic period. The one is at S. Nizier: there the foliage is so rare as

to give the effect almost of a leafless scroll. The other is at S.

Nicholas: there the tree grows through into the tracery, where it

appears no longer, as in the lights below, upon a deep blue ground, but

upon yellow, the radiance, as it proves, from the group of the Trinity,

into which the tree eventually blossoms.

[Illustration: 246. PART OF A JESSE WINDOW, CATHEDRAL, TROYES, 1499.]

Quite one of the most beautiful Jesse trees that exist is in a Late

Gothic window at Alençon. It is unusual, probably unique in design. The

figures, with the exception of Jesse, are confined to the upper lights

and tracery, forming a double row towards the top of the window. This

leaves a large amount of space for the tree, a fine, fat, Gothic scroll,

foliated more after the manner of oak than acanthus leaves, all in rich

greens (yellowish, apple, emerald-like) on a greyish-blue ground. It

forms a splendid patch of cool colour, contrasting in the most beautiful

way with the figures, draped mostly in purple, red, and yellow. The

figures issue from great flower-like features as big as the width of the

light allows, mostly of red, or purple, or white, with a calyx in green.

The Virgin issues from a white flower suggestive of the lily. In the

window shown on page 368 the tree blossoms also into a topmost lily

supporting the Madonna. A characteristic feature about the Alençon

window is, the absence of symmetry in its scheme. Of the eight lights

which go to make up its width, only three are devoted, below the

springing of the great arch over it, to the Jesse tree. Three others

contain a representation of the death of the Virgin, under a separate

canopy, and in the two outermost lights are separate subjects on a

smaller scale. This kind of eccentricity of composition is by no means

unusual. A Jesse window very often occupies only one half or one quarter

of a large Late Gothic window. And the strange thing is that the effect

is invariably satisfactory, often delightful. You do not miss the

symmetry, but enjoy the accidental variety of colour.

In sixteenth century work, and even before that, you meet with windows

in which figures are in colours upon a white ground. In that case the

tree is usually painted upon the white and stained. So it was in the

beautiful Flemish window, parts of which are now dispersed over the East

windows of S. George's, Hanover Square, calculated, there, rather to

mystify the student of design. In it the grapes, it will be seen (page

216), are glazed in purple pot-metal colour. In the present condition of

the window, now that the enamel-brown has partly peeled off, the grape

bunches scarcely seem to belong to the rather ghostly vine behind them.

That is a misfortune which not uncommonly happens where reliance has

been placed upon delicate painting; but for all that this is noble

glass, and the figures, as was also not uncommon at the period, are

designed with great dignity.

[Illustration: 247. JESSE WINDOW, BEAUVAIS.]

There is distinction, again, in the drawing of the figures in the Jesse

at S. Etienne, Beauvais, shown on page 368. That is a splendid specimen

of characteristically Renaissance work. Jesse is honoured by a rich

canopy of white and stain, which allows of a deep purple background

separating him from his descendants. These appear as demi-figures, very

richly robed, in strong relief against a pale purplish-blue ground of

the atmospheric quality peculiar to the period. The vase-shaped flowers

whence they issue are also in rich colour, dark against the ground, as

are the variegated fruits and green leaves of the tree, but its branches

are of silvery-white, suggesting of birch-bark. This tree-trunk is

altogether too realistically treated for the ornamental leafage and

still more arbitrary flowers growing from it; but it is a marvellously

fine window, masterly in drawing and perfectly painted. And it owes

positively nothing to age or accident. Indeed, the effect is somewhat

diluted by restoration. Even on the reduced scale of the illustration

given, you can detect in the head of the hatless figure to the right a

touch of modern French character; and the fine colour of it all is fine

in spite of the flatness of tint in the background, for which the

nineteenth century must be held responsible.

Except for the confusion caused by the occasional introduction of

canopies and borders, a Jesse window may be usually recognised at a

glance. In the cathedral at Troyes, however, is what might be mistaken,

at first sight, for a Jesse tree. But the recumbent figure is not that

of Jesse, but of Christ. He lies, in fact, in the wine press, whence

grows a vine bearing half effigies of the Twelve Apostles, and the

patron saints of the Donor and his wife, who themselves had places in

the lower portion of the sidelights, but the figure of the wife is now

missing. The general design and effect of this window, and especially

the seriousness of the ornamental portion of it, are such as almost to

belie the period of its execution. It is an exceptionally fine window

for the year 1625.

This same subject is anticipated in a sixteenth century window (1552) at

Conches. There the Saviour treads the blue grapes, and a stream of

blood-red wine issues from them. The frame of the press immediately

behind him is designed to suggest the cross.

The Jesse window referred to in the north transept at Carcassonne is

balanced by a window on the south, which is of peculiarly interesting

design, not, to my knowledge, elsewhere to be found in glass, although

it occurs in Early Italian painting. It represents the Tree of Life, of

Knowledge of Good and Evil--which knowledge appears to be inscribed all

over it and the window. It might almost be described as a tree of

lettering, for it bears upon its branches (which are labels) and upon

its fruit (which are heart-shaped tablets) voluminous inscriptions, not,

in the present state of the glass, always easy to decipher, but most

effectively decorative. On either side the window, by way of border to

the outer lights, is a series of little figures, prophets, or whoever

they may be, bearing other inscribed scrolls, mingling with the boughs

of the tree, the leaves of which form, as it were, a kind of green and

yellow fringe to the inscribed white branches. At the foot of the tree

stand Adam and Eve, in the act of yielding to the temptation of the

woman-headed serpent coiled round its trunk, and beyond are shown the

Ark of Noah and the Ark of the Covenant. Amidst the upper branches is a

crucifix, the narrow red cross so inconspicuous that the Christ seems

almost to hang upon the tree, and at its summit is the emblem of the

pelican, _Qui sanguine pascit alumnos_. This is altogether not only a

striking, and, at the same time, most satisfactory window, but an

admirable instance of the use of lettering in ornament. Lettering is

very often introduced into Jesse windows, and forms sometimes a

conspicuous feature in them: how much more use might be made of it is

suggested by this Tree of Life.

CHAPTER XXX.

STORY WINDOWS.

There is something very interesting in the simple heartedness with which

the mediæval artist would attack a subject quite impossible of artistic

realisation, apart from his modest powers of draughtsmanship, or the

limitations of glass.