Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 20

For dignity of treatment it would be difficult to match the specimen of Flemish gla.s.s shown on page 304, now at Warwick Castle. Like the Dutch and Italian work, it is painted on clear gla.s.s but without the prettiness of flesh tint, and the background to the ornament (it shows dull grey in the print) is brilliant yellow stain. This little light and its companion on page 98 are as large in style as they are beautiful in effect.

There is a gayer touch in the less seriously decorative panel of French work in the Louvre given on page 307. In that pot-metal is used for the dark ruby of the outer dress, and for the little bits of blue rather cunningly let into the spandrils of the arch. The fancifully designed canopy, the arabesque, and a portion of the drapery are in stain, all delicately painted upon clear gla.s.s, and glazed mainly on quarry lines--from which, however, the designer saw fit to depart. What he meant by the unfortunate circular lead line about the head is difficult to imagine. It can hardly be, like other erratic leading, the result of mending. No fracture could possibly have steered so carefully between the figure and the ornament. It looks almost as if at the last he had lost confidence in his technique, and, in trying vainly to avoid lead lines, had ended in giving them extraordinary emphasis.

In ultra-delicate domestic work the leads are more than ever the difficulty. One is uncomfortably conscious of them in the wonderful series of windows--formerly at Ecouen, and now in the Chateau de Chantilly--in which is set forth in forty pictures the story of Cupid and Psyche. A specimen of these is given on page 218, thanks to the friendly permission of Monsieur Magne, who ill.u.s.trates the whole of them in his admirable monograph of the Montmorency gla.s.s. The legend to the effect that Raffaelle designed and Palissy painted them, is past all possible belief; but they are very remarkable specimens of sixteenth century work, restored about the period of the First Empire, and mark somewhere about the high-water mark of French domestic picture gla.s.s.

A glance at these windows is enough to show that they were never schemed with any definite view to glazing. Rather it would appear that the pictures were first designed and then the leads introduced where best they could be disguised. But the disguise is everywhere transparent.

Such gauzy painting is inadequate; it hides nothing. You see always the thick black lines of lead, cruel enough, but clinging in a cowardly way to the edges of weak forms, sneaking into shadows, and foolishly pretending to pa.s.s themselves off as the continuation of painted outlines not one-twentieth part so strong as they. The sparing use of glazing lines makes them all the more conspicuous. They must originally have a.s.serted themselves even more than they do now; for the accidental lead lines introduced in reparation, however much they damage the pictures, do in a measure support the original glazing lines, and pull the windows together. The Chantilly gla.s.s goes to prove the impossibility of satisfactorily disposing of the leads in very small figure subjects in grisaille. In work on a larger scale it wants only a man who knows his trade to manage it. Witness what was done in church work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 206. GRISAILLE, WARWICK CASTLE.]

The propriety of executing figures in grisaille at all has been called in question by Viollet le Duc. "Every bit of white gla.s.s," he said, "should be diapered with pattern traced with a brush; and, since this treatment is not possible in flesh painting, flesh ought not to be painted." Moreover, he says that grisaille has always the appearance of vibrating, and the vibration fatigues the eye; therefore, he argues, it is labour lost to paint white figures. Far be it from an ornamentist to deny that a great deal too much importance is attached to figure work in decoration. But the amount of tracing necessary on white gla.s.s is relative. In grisaille it is quite safe to leave some gla.s.s clear; and, if it is not worth while to paint figures, is it worth while to paint anything worth looking at, or worth painting?

[Ill.u.s.tration: 207. LOUIS XIII. AND ANNE OF AUSTRIA.]

The truth is, it wearies the sight to look at any gla.s.s for long at a stretch, and for a mere _coup d'oeil_ the most brutal workmans.h.i.+p would often do. But, if work is ever to be seen from near, the charm is gone when once you know how coa.r.s.e it is. One tires of crude work, and delights more and more in what is delicate. Whoever has taken pleasure in such work as the windows at S. Alpin at Troyes would find it hard to renounce the figure in grisaille.

To return to the leading of grisaille. Of the two extremes, the bold, even the too bold, acknowledgment of the constructional lines of a window, is far preferable to the timid attempt to conceal them. The glaziers of the Renaissance eventually got over the difficulty by the simple plan of inserting into quarry windows (usually unpainted) or into pattern work of plain gla.s.s only, little panes of painted gla.s.s. In this way there are introduced into some windows at the Chateau de Chaumont some very beautiful little portrait medallions, outlined with a firmness and modelled with a delicacy which remind one of the drawings of Clouet.

At the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg are some similar medallion heads, quite Holbein-ish in character. A later portrait panel, lacking the style and draughtsmans.h.i.+p of these, but very cleverly painted (by Linard Gontier they say), is reproduced on page 305. It represents, as the inscription and cypher go to show, Louis Treize and Anne of Austria, as bride and bridegroom. Its date, therefore, speaks for itself. Another little pane by Gontier, from the Hotel des Arquebusiers at Troyes, now in the library there, is given on page 310. The characteristic ornamental work surrounding this, though not forming a consecutive frame to the picture, is of about the same period with it (1621). Its design consists of that modified form of Arab foliation (compare it with the detail on page 352), which was very much used in damascening and niello work; indeed, the French still call that kind of pattern "_nielle_."

Here it is traced in a fine brown outline, and filled in partly with yellow stain and partly with blue enamel. The effect is pleasing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 208. DOMESTIC GLa.s.s, THE LOUVRE.]

It was in Switzerland that gla.s.s painting other than for churches was most extensively practised. The Council Chambers of Swiss towns, and the halls of trade and other guilds, were enriched with bands of armorial gla.s.s across the windows; and throughout the sixteenth century it was the custom to present to neighbouring towns or friendly Corporations a painted window panel. Great part of these have been dispersed, and in Switzerland they are now perhaps rarer than in the museums of other countries. The Germanic Museum at Nuremberg and the Hotel Clny, at Paris, are rich in Swiss gla.s.s; and we have some at South Kensington.

Superb examples, however, still remain in Switzerland--for example, in the Rath-haus at Lucerne--though they belong to a period as late as the first ten years of the seventeenth century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 209. PIERCED QUARRIES, WARWICK.]

The usual form of design consisted of a sort of florid canopy frame of moderate dimensions, enclosing a s.h.i.+eld or s.h.i.+elds of arms, supported by fantastically dressed men-at-arms. There was often great spirit in the swagger of these melodramatic swashbucklers, admirably expressive of the idea which underlies all heraldry: "I am somebody," they seem to say, "pray who are you?" It is a comparatively modest specimen of this cla.s.s that is presented on page 90. In the windows of a private house it was frequently the master and mistress who supported the armorial s.h.i.+eld, all in their Sunday best, and very proud of themselves too. Little Bible subjects were also painted, mainly in grisaille. It was for window panes that Holbein drew the Stations of the Cross, now among the chief treasures of the museum at Bale. These also must be cla.s.sed with domestic work. They may in some cases have been destined for a church; but they would much more appropriately decorate a private oratory.

These heraldic or pictorial panes go even beyond the delicacy of cabinet pictures, and are sometimes more on the scale of miniatures; but of such miniature painting the Swiss were masters. They carried craftmans.h.i.+p to its very furthest point, and among them traditions of good work lingered long after they were quite dead in France. Of English work there was not much; and of that the less said the better.

Far into the eighteenth century the Swiss still had a care for their window panes, and, when painting went out of fas.h.i.+on, engraved them with armorial or other devices. Precisely that kind of engraving was employed also upon polished mirrors, of which one finds examples in Italy.

Unpainted quarry windows in English houses were sometimes relieved, at the same time that ventilation was secured, by the occasional introduction (in the place of gla.s.s) of little fretted panels of pierced lead, as shown on page 308. Below is a diamond-shaped piercing of the Jacobean period.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 210. QUARRY OF FRETTED LEAD.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 211. DOMESTIC WINDOW PANE, TROYES.]

CHAPTER XXV.

THE USE OF THE CANOPY.

No one can have paid much attention to stained gla.s.s without observing the conspicuous part played in its design by the quasi-architectural canopy.

Inasmuch as it, in a sense, enshrines the figure, there exists some sort of symbolic reason for its use. But that is not enough to account for its all but universal employment. A more obvious excuse for it is, the purpose it fulfils in the construction of design. It is a means of accounting for the position of figures midway up the window, perhaps one above the other, and not standing upon the sill. It is at once framework and support to them, preventing them from seeming to float there in s.p.a.ce.

Where the designer of the church designed also the gla.s.s for it, it was almost inevitable that he should plan it more or less upon architectural lines; and so we find that in windows known to have been designed by architects the canopy is very often the most conspicuous part of the design. But at all times the master-builder must have been a power, and at all times also even glaziers and gla.s.s painters must have been so intimately acquainted with forms of architecture, that it is not surprising they should have introduced them into their work.

The fact is, the designer happens upon something like a canopy almost without intending it, and, having arrived so far, perfects the resemblance to it. Suppose a window of four long lights, in each of which it is desired to introduce three figures. That means dividing it horizontally into three, which may be done by the use of bands of inscription, as at _a_ in the diagram overleaf: there is no suggestion of architecture there. Supposing you wish to frame the window at the sides, so as to stop the picture, as at _b_, to the left of the diagram; you have still no very distinct suggestion of architecture. But if, the better to frame the picture, you add an extra band of colour, as shown at _c_, you arrive at once at something so like perspective as to indicate an architectural elevation. Indeed, that is precisely the form the canopy takes sometimes in Italian gla.s.s. Even when the cinque-centist framed his picture merely in lines he could hardly help giving them the appearance of mouldings, painting upon (as at Arezzo) egg-and-tongue or other familiar architectural enrichment in white and stain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 212. DIAGRAM.]

In the clerestory at Freiburg is a window in which the serried saints appear at first sight to be simply framed by lines of pale purple; but on examination these resolve themselves into a simple architectural elevation, with even a hint of unsuspected shadow in it. The date of that example is 1512; and canopies, not to go back to Graeco-Roman decoration, begin with the beginning of Gothic. It is adduced, therefore, to show, not the origin of canopy work, but how inevitably something of the sort occurred. Its immediate source is clearly imitation. The thing is borrowed straight from architecture, and indicates, it may justly be said, if not a certain lack of inventive faculty on the part of the designer, at least some disinclination to take the pains to invent.

So in the thirteenth century we have funny little gla.s.s penthouses over the figures of saints, architectural in form but not in colour; in the fourteenth windows are crossed by rows of tall bra.s.sy disproportioned tabernacles, as yet flat fronted; in the fifteenth, white ghosts of masonry pretend to stand out over the figures; in the sixteenth, altar-like, or other more or less monumental, structures, are pictured with something like the solidity of stonework; and eventually the canopy is merged in painted gla.s.s architecture, which joins itself on as best it can to the actual masonry.

The forms of canopy typical of each period of architecture have been discussed in the several chapters on design, but something remains to be said upon canopy work in general, and upon particular instances of it.

The Early canopy goes for nothing as design. Its one merit is that it is inconspicuous. One could wish that the Decorated were equally so. There is, as a rule, no shutting your eyes to its ma.s.s of overpowering shrinework. When, by way of exception, it chances to be modest it is sometimes more interesting--as where it is scarcely more than a cusped arch, or where, as at Stra.s.sburg, it takes the form of an arcaded band across the window, in which are series of little demi-figures. At Cologne Cathedral also sundry saints are pigeon-holed in this way.

_Apropos_ of this, it should be mentioned that it invariably adds to the interest of a canopy, when; for example, the broad shaft of a Decorated canopy enniches angels and other figures, or when they are introduced among its pinnacles or in its base. The wide-spreading German canopy affords scope for variety of design not possible so long as the structure is confined within a single light. In some four-light windows at Erfurt (1349-1372) the broad shafts of the canopies, with saints in separate niches, occupy the whole width of the outer lights, leaving only two lights for the central picture. In a five-light window at Stra.s.sburg the canopy is five-arched, allowing separate arches in the outer lights for figures of saints, whilst the three central ones cover a single subject.

In canopies which include niches with separate subsidiary subjects, these are sometimes by way of prelude to the main story. In the cathedral at Berne is something of the kind. There, among the pinnacles of the canopy which crowns the subject of the Adoration, are seen the Kings setting out on their pilgrimage, journeying by night, having audience of Herod, and arriving finally at the city of Bethlehem.

In the great altar-like canopies of the Renaissance there is sometimes a gallery above, with angels or other figures, which give points of colour amidst the white. In any case, the canopy is usually more interesting when it is peopled.

The Perpendicular canopy is in effect much more pleasing than what had gone before, but it sins in its simulation of stonework. There also little figures in white and stain are very effectively introduced into the shafts and other parts of the construction, but more in the form of architectural sculpture. There are some very interesting instances of this at Fairford, though the canopies themselves are not otherwise peculiarly interesting.

The useful device of low, flat-topped canopies, adopted in the nave windows at Cologne Cathedral, seldom occurs out of Germany. It is there most successful. Indeed, these particular canopies are interesting examples of the interpenetration of architectural tracery as well as of its moderate and modest use.

Late German canopies are often much more leafy than French or English; they are less architectural--or rather, the architecture breaks out into more free and flowing growth. The charm of Late Gothic canopy work, as was said, lies in its colour, or in the absence of colour--in its silvery effect, that is to say. And one may safely add that quite the most satisfactory canopies, in whatever style, are those in which white largely prevails, modified by stain, but preserving its greyish character. In later Renaissance work white is still largely used; but it is made less brilliant by painted shadow, and so has less to excuse its architectural pretensions. At Milan there is a window in which what should be white is in various granular tints of brown.

The coloured canopy, to which the Italians adhered (as well as to the border enclosing it), does not frame them as the white gla.s.s does. The idea appears to be, on the contrary, that it should form part of the picture. Elsewhere than in Italy coloured canopies, other than yellow, are rare; but they occur. There are, for example, the hideous flesh-coloured constructions peculiar to Germany. At Troyes are some not unsatisfactory little canopies in green, and others in purple (1499). At Chalons-sur-Marne is an effective canopy (1526-1537) of golden arabesque on purple. At Freiburg (1525) is a steely-blue Renaissance canopy, from which depend festoons of white and greenish-yellow, against the ruby ground of the subject. And there are others satisfactory enough. But so invariably effective is the framework of white and stain, that to depart from it seems almost like giving up the very excuse for canopies.

The Late Gothic canopy work does most effectually frame the pictures, and gives light, of course, at the same time. It goes admirably with the colour scheme, which includes always a fair quant.i.ty of white, even in comparatively rich figure subjects. There is no denying, nor any desire to deny, its altogether admirable effect. If the effect were not otherwise to be obtained, the end would justify the means. But the effect is due simply to the setting of the subjects in a framework of white, not to the architectural character of the design. All that those Perpendicular canopies do could be done equally without architectural forms at all. Canopies make no more beautiful screens of silvery-white than, say, the Five Sisters at York. Intrinsically they are less interesting than pattern work. They give less scope for arranging subjects variously, just as one will; and they allow less range for the fancy of the artist. The most interesting canopies, and among the most effective, are those Early Renaissance picture frames (French, German, or Italian) which, whilst just sufficiently suggesting something near enough to architecture to be called canopies, are really little more than arabesque. One might almost say they are pleasing in proportion as they depart from the quasi-architectural formula.

The enormous value of the ma.s.s of white afforded by the canopy, as a setting for colour, has reconciled us too readily to its use. Why not this ma.s.s of white without pretended forms of masonry, without this paraphernalia of pinnacles? The architect alone, perhaps, in his heart likes canopy work, and would prefer it to any other kind of ornamental device. When he plans a window, or directs its planning, forms of architectural construction occur to him naturally. Supposing him to be an artist (as we have perhaps a right to expect him to be) he produces a fine thing; but were he to work upon more workmanlike lines, or, to speak quite precisely, more upon the lines of the worker in gla.s.s, how much better he would do--being an artist! In his reliance upon inappropriate structural forms, he makes the obvious mistake of depending upon the kind of thing with which he is most familiar, not the thing especially called for. Each particular craft has a technique of its own.

One other cla.s.s of person also loves canopy work--the tradesman; but his affection for it is less disinterested, and more easily accounted for.

The stock canopy (as every one knows who has been, as it were, behind the counter) is a famous device for cheapening production. The examples chosen for ill.u.s.tration throughout these pages do, on the whole, much more than justice to the periods which they were chosen to represent; but, taken altogether, they do not, even so, form a very effective plea for canopy work.

Were the canopy more defensible than it is in gla.s.s, it would still have monopolised far too large a place in the scheme of mediaeval and Renaissance design. We owe largely to it, in connection with the gradually increasing claims of figure work, the all but extinction of pattern gla.s.s. Figure work is practically implied by the canopy.

Occasionally, indeed, architecture has formed the whole _motif_ of a window; but the case is so rare that it does not count. Once in a while there may be excuse, and even occasion, for almost any device.

There is no valid reason of art why figures and figure subjects should not be framed in ornament, designed indeed with reference to the architecture of the building, but not in the least in the likeness of architecture. This ornament might perfectly well be in white and stain.

Ornamental setting in colour does occur in thirteenth century medallion windows, and again (though only by exception) in certain Early Renaissance gla.s.s; but by that time pictures, as a rule, absorbed all the interest of design. The instinct which makes us want to give even pictured personages some sort of roof above their heads is more natural than logical. Anyway, to make windows to look like niches in the wall, is an absurd ideal of design, and the nearer the gla.s.s painter gets to it the further he has gone off the track. If anything in the nature of a canopy be desirable, clearly it should be constructed on the lines, not of masonry, but of glazing.

CHAPTER XXVI.