Windows, A Book About Stained & Painted Glass Part 21

A PLEA FOR ORNAMENT.

There is a direction in which gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s. 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 gla.s.s painting, which lent itself so much more readily than mosaic to pictorial expression. We owe to that, not only the perfection of gla.s.s painting, and its ultimate degradation, but the neglect of latent possibilities in more thoroughly mosaic gla.s.s, aye, in pure glazing.

Even in figure work, much might be done for clerestory and other distant work, at all events, in pure mosaic gla.s.s. Those who have not closely observed old gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s would limit the artist to the baldest kind of pictorial effect. Something certainly must be sacrificed to fit treatment of the material, or gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, even though that be barbaric? It is not quite certain but that gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s. 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 gla.s.s-lovers most dearly love in gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s, 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 craftsmans.h.i.+p. It is not, therefore, for one moment suggested that story, sentiment, meaning, in windows, should be ruthlessly sacrificed to craftsmans.h.i.+p, 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 gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s, and especially of colour; the artless wors.h.i.+pper 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 aesthetic 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 wors.h.i.+ppers allow them to be there. The excuse for gla.s.s is its decorative effect. Its value is in its colour. A Saint in stained gla.s.s (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 gla.s.s 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, ma.s.s, 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 appet.i.te 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 repet.i.tion 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 circ.u.mstances 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 mediaeval 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s? How does one tell the period of a window? These are not questions that can be fully answered in the short s.p.a.ce 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 cla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s_, 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 gla.s.s_ belongs to the Middle or Transitional Gothic period. We call it "Decorated," for the inadequate reason that its detail is naturalistic.

_Fifteenth century gla.s.s_, 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 gla.s.s_ 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 213. ST. REMI, REIMS.]

_Eighteenth century gla.s.s_ is not of sufficient account to be cla.s.sed.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 214. DETAIL FROM MEDALLION WINDOWS AT CANTERBURY.]

EARLY GLa.s.s.

The first thing which strikes one in Early Gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s (_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 cla.s.s 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.).

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 gla.s.s with ornamental scrollwork, in French with geometric diaper (opposite).

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.