Cathédrale de Chartres; Civilization, Medieval; Mont-Saint-Michel (Abbey : France)
The execution of this window is said to be superb. Of the colour,
and its relations with that of the Saint James, one needs time and
long acquaintance to learn the value. In the feeling, compared with
that of the twelfth century, one needs no time in order to see a
change. These two windows are as French and as modern as a picture
of Lancret; they are pure art, as simply decorative as the
decorations of the Grand Opera. The thirteenth century knew more
about religion and decoration than the twentieth century will ever
learn. The windows were neither symbolic nor mystical, nor more
religious than they pretended to be. That they are more intelligent
or more costly or more effective is nothing to the purpose, so long
as one grants that the combat of Roland and Ferragus, or Roland
winding his olifant, or Charlemagne cutting off heads and
transfixing Moors, were subjects never intended to teach religion or
instruct the ignorant, but to please the Queen of Heaven as they
pleased the queens of earth with a roman, not in verse but in
colour, as near as possible to decorative perfection. Instinctively
one looks to the corresponding bay, opposite, to see what the
artists could have done to balance these two great efforts of their
art; but the bay opposite is now occupied by the entrance to Saint
Piat's chapel and one does not know what changes may have been made
in the fourteenth century to rearrange the glass; yet, even as it
now stands, the Sylvester window which corresponds to the
Charlemagne is, as glass, the strongest in the whole cathedral. In
the next chapel, on our left, come the martyrs, with Saint Stephen,
the first martyr, in the middle window. Naturally the subject is
more serious, but the colour is not differently treated. A step
further, and you see the artists returning to their lighter
subjects. The stories of Saint Julian and Saint Thomas are more
amusing than the plots of half the thirteenth-century romances, and
not very much more religious. The subject of Saint Thomas is a
pendant to that of Saint James, for Saint Thomas was a great
traveller and an architect, who carried Mary's worship to India as
Saint James carried it to Spain. Here is the amusement of many days
in studying the stories, the colour and the execution of these
windows, with the help of the "Monographs" of Chartres and Bourges
or the "Golden Legend" and occasional visits to Le Mans, Tours,
Clermont Ferrand, and other cathedrals; but, in passing, one has to
note that the window of Saint Thomas was given by France, and bears
the royal arms, perhaps for Philip Augustus the King; while the
window of Saint Julian was given by the Carpenters and Coopers. One
feels no need to explain how it happens that the taste of the royal
family, and of their tailors, furriers, carpenters, and coopers,
should fit so marvellously, one with another, and with that of the
Virgin; but one can compare with theirs the taste of the Stone-
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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