Chapter VII: Other Thirteenth Century Windows

[Sidenote: Salisbury and Peterborough.]

A single band of craftsmen might, as far as we can now tell, have been responsible for nearly all the stained glass that was produced at any one time in the twelfth century in England and the north of France; but by the time the Trinity Chapel at Canterbury was finished, a great many such bands must have been at work, yet all deriving their art from the same source--the school of Chartres, St. Denis, and Canterbury. The output was enormous, especially in the first half of the thirteenth century. I have already spoken of Lincoln, but Salisbury and Peterborough were once rich in glass of the thirteenth century, that of Peterborough--now destroyed--being known to have been given, some of it at least, as early as 1214, and York has the famous "Five Sisters."

[Sidenote: Bourges.]

In France, Bourges is only second to Chartres for the quantity and interest of its early glass, which was certainly begun long before the windows of Chartres were finished. Every one knows the rose windows of Notre Dame at Paris, and besides these Amiens, Beauvais, Laon, Rheims, Tours, Soissons, Auxerre, and in fact nearly all the great cathedrals of France, contain glass of the period, while fragments of it are to be found in many parish churches both in England and France.

[Sidenote: Westwell.]

At Westwell in Kent, for instance, is a Jesse Tree of 1240-1250 which is well worth study, in which the details of the foliage resemble fragments of one at Salisbury and another at Troyes, and show the development that had taken place from the Jesse Trees of Chartres and St. Denis.

It is impossible, however, in the limits of this work to describe even all the important windows of this period, and I have taken those I have already described as typical of their time and as together showing the progress of the development of the art.

[Sidenote: The Sainte Chapelle.]

The most complete example of the work of the latter part of the thirteenth century is the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, built by St. Louis to contain the Crown of Thorns, which he had purchased with other relics from the Emperor of Constantinople, who was then in need of ready money. The Chapel was consecrated in 1248, but although some at least of the windows are said to have been prepared beforehand and to have been in their place on that occasion, yet the series was certainly not completed till after the death of St. Louis in 1270, as that event is represented in one of them.

The glass has unfortunately suffered a good deal from restoration, and it is difficult now to say quite how much beauty it once had, but it must be confessed that at present it gives one none of the joy and wonder of Chartres. Yet the very design of the Chapel shows the importance which the art had now attained, for the building is constructed entirely with a view to being filled with stained glass, being in fact a mere glass-house with no wall spaces at all. If the colour effect may be judged of from the specimens of the original glass now in South Kensington Museum, the place must have been a wondrous Aladdin's cave of jewels, but at the same time it may be doubted whether the arrangement was a wise one. The windows at Chartres gain immensely by the spaces of gloom between them, whereas here the eye gets no rest.

In detail, apart from colour, the work shows a certain falling off. The artist seems to have been cramped by the necessity of adapting the medallion window to such narrow lights. One misses the fine broad border which does so much to "pull together" the earlier medallion windows. The borders at the Sainte Chapelle are narrow and uninteresting, and even so the medallions have sometimes to overlap them.

[Sidenote: Work of Clement of Chartres at Rouen.]

On the other hand, the work of Clement of Chartres in Rouen Cathedral, which is as late as 1290-1295, is as good as anything that was done in the thirteenth century. Besides a great many broken remains of thirteenth century work in the nave, there are five complete windows in the ambulatory of the apse. Two of these between them illustrate the story of Joseph, and are particularly beautiful. One of them (Plate XIV.) is signed by Clement of Chartres, and the other is obviously by the same hand. I should hesitate, however, to say positively that the other three are his work too, but I think two of them may be. Of these, one contains in its lowest section the story of the Good Samaritan, with other subjects above which I have not identified, and the other--a very good one--the story of St. Julian, which is a parallel to that of Oedipus except that, being Christian, it ends with atonement and forgiveness.

The fifth window illustrates the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. It is hardly as good as the others, and is very red and hot in general colour. The filling in, of yellow suns on a blue ground, is very unlike any other thirteenth century work. On the whole this window seems to me to show a certain restlessness, indicative of the change of style that was so soon to follow. The redness, however, may perhaps be intentional, as being appropriate to the subject, for of the three twelfth century windows in the west end of Chartres Cathedral, the one which illustrates the Passion is far redder than the others.

The iron-work of these windows shows a return to the straight-bar system, but the relation of the medallions to the iron-work is, as may be seen by the illustration, wholly different to what it was in the twelfth century. By the end of the thirteenth century the bent iron-work has wholly disappeared.

Before leaving the Early Period I must touch upon another of its developments, namely, the grisaille window.

[Sidenote: Grisaille windows.]

Side by side with the richly coloured windows which we have been considering, there had grown up during the thirteenth century a style of window in which a wholly different effect was aimed at. These are what are called grisaille windows, in which the bulk of the glass is white, only studded here and there with jewels of colour and with, perhaps, a coloured border, the surface of the white glass being variegated and ornamented with delicate patterns in painted line work. The effect of this in old glass is very beautiful,--there are few things lovelier than "the Five Sisters" at York,--but all modern attempts to imitate it have been hopeless failures, looking like so much transparent paper. Perhaps our modern white glass is too clear and hard-looking, or the difference may be merely that between the work of those who are artists and those who are not.

The causes which led to the development of this style of window were probably two: one, the desire for more light, of which the richly coloured windows admitted but little; and the other, simply economy, for a window of this sort could be produced comparatively cheaply. Then, too, the Cistercians, whose rule, adopted in the twelfth century, prohibited the use of colour altogether, had shown what could be done in patterns of white glass and lead alone.

Unless you count the "gryphon windows" in St. Denis, which are mainly the work of Viollet-le-Duc, grisaille seems almost wholly a development of the thirteenth century. It is interesting to see that just as the design of the coloured window seems always to have been conceived as a light pattern on a dark ground, so the earliest grisaille, even though the quantity of white far exceeds the colour, still seems to have been conceived as a white pattern on a coloured ground, the ground being, as it were, almost entirely hidden by the pattern. Later this idea gets reversed, and the coloured pieces are mere jewels or lines contained in the pattern.

In a white window the leads, from their greater thickness, are more conspicuous than the traced lines of the painting, and in consequence it is upon the leads that the artist depends for the main features of his design. The earliest grisaille windows may be divided into two classes: those in which the pattern is formed of narrow "straps" of white glass interlacing or seeming to interlace; and the other in which the leads form a flat geometrical pattern, as at Lincoln. The painted pattern on the glass consists of branching scroll work in simple outline, forming stems and the round-lobed leaves which were the thirteenth century convention for foliage. In the earlier work the ground is covered with delicate cross-hatching, which at a distance resolves itself into a pearly grey, against which the scroll work stands out white. At first, too, the painted pattern is, so to speak, contained within the leading, and merely enriches and emphasizes the pattern formed by it; but in later work, towards the end of the century, it becomes independent of the leading and grows through it, spreading over the surface of the window in graceful curves like a creeper over a trellis. The influence of the medallion window is often seen in contemporary grisaille, of which the design frequently consists of interlacing medallions of strap-work of the same shape as those in the coloured windows.

[Sidenote: Rheims.]

[Sidenote: Angers, Soissons, and Chartres.]

The ornament surrounding some of the figures in the triforium of St. Remi at Rheims, and which Mr. Westlake considers to date from about 1200, contains so much colour as to be hardly grisaille, and the same may be said of one of the lancets in the north transept of Lincoln Cathedral, of which the others contain grisaille of a later date. There is, however, some very early thirteenth century grisaille--true grisaille, with interlacing bands--at St. Serge at Angers, and some at Soissons of about 1230. Chartres has four or five grisaille windows, of the middle of the century or a little earlier, in the apsidal chapels. These have broad, richly coloured borders, a very beautiful feature, which one finds also at Salisbury.

[Sidenote: Westminster Abbey.]

According to Professor Lethaby[11] the original glazing of Westminster Abbey, begun in 1253, was, at least in the lower windows, of grisaille, of which some remains are in the triforium. From the fabric rolls we know the name of the master-glazier, Lawrence, presumably an Englishman, and the weekly accounts show wages paid to fourteen glaziers in all.

[Sidenote: Salisbury.]

The few remains of old glass which that eighteenth century vandal, the architect Wyatt, has left us at Salisbury include some very beautiful and interesting specimens of thirteenth century grisaille, of which the date is, according to Winston, from 1240 to 1270. In most of these the pattern when analysed is found to be formed of overlapping (not interlacing) geometrical forms outlined in bands of colour and filled in with white, painted with patterns of the usual conventional scroll work on a cross-hatched ground. There are besides, however, some remains of ornamental glazing of an interesting and rare kind in which there is no painting whatever, and the pattern is obtained by lead-work alone, forming diagonal white bands interlacing in various ways on a white ground, and containing here and there between them little square dies of blue. Some coloured tracings of these may be seen in South Kensington Museum.

[Sidenote: "The Five Sisters" of York.]

The finest grisaille windows in England or, for that matter, in the world, are the five immense lancets which fill the end of the north transept of York Minster and are known as "the Five Sisters." Their date is probably about 1260. The iron-work in them is straight-barred, and the massive main bars, placed every 3½ feet or so, divide the space between the broad borders into a succession of squares, one above the other, each one of which is occupied by a medallion--a different shape in each light--outlined with a narrow band of colour, and having bosses of colour at the centre and between the medallions. One hardly can trace the plan of the painted pattern on the white, which besides is much confused with centuries of breakage and repair, and one is only conscious of it as texture, which indeed is its _raison d'être_. Five feet wide, and towering to a height of more than 50 feet, each "sister" is a shimmering mass of pearl and silver, delicately veined and jewelled with colour to give quality to its whiteness.

[Sidenote: "Quarries."]

The same tendency that caused the artist to substitute mosaic diaper for the scroll work in the setting of his medallions in coloured windows led him in time to fill large spaces of his grisaille windows with painted "quarries." "Quarries" (from the French _carré_) are small diamond-shaped panes, and were then the quickest and most economical way of glazing any given space. Sometimes towards the end of the century the painted pattern ran over the quarries independently of them, but more often in the thirteenth century each quarry was a repetition of the next, the whole thus forming a regular diaper. Sometimes each quarry has a thick black line painted parallel to two, or sometimes all four, of its sides at a distance of three quarters of an inch or so, leaving the space between it and the lead blank while the rest of the quarry is patterned. The effect of this when glazed together is that of interlacing white bands on a ground of pattern.

Apart from economy, the principal motive for the use of grisaille in windows was, as I have said, the need for light. In the Cathedral of Chartres, where there is no grisaille except that in the chapels already mentioned, and where practically all the other windows are filled with richly coloured glass, it is quite difficult to read in the nave on a dull day. It is possible, therefore, that in some churches a certain number of windows may have been deliberately reserved for grisaille.

[Sidenote: Combination of grisaille and figure work.]

It is not, however, till the very end of the thirteenth century, and then only rarely, that coloured figures and grisaille were combined in the same light as shown in the example from Poitiers in Plate XV., though this is a salient feature of the style of the succeeding period. In the clerestory windows of the choir of St. Pierre at Chartres, which belong to the closing years of the century, the problem has been attacked in an interesting and unique manner, but as the glass in that church really marks the transition to the succeeding period, I shall deal with it later.

[Sidenote: Conclusion of the Early Period.]

I must now leave the Early Period. If I have devoted a larger space to it than I have to give to either of those succeeding, it is because to me it is the most interesting of all. In all later work artists seem, by comparison, unsatisfied and trying, sometimes with more, sometimes with less, success, to reconcile opposing ideals in their work. Never again does one find the same perfect understanding of the limitations of the material, together with such daring and grandeur of conception, and such depth and earnestness in the ideas expressed.

FOOTNOTE:

[11] "_Westminster Abbey and the Kings' Craftsmen._"