Stained glass of the middle ages in England and FranceArnold, Hugh
History
Stained glass of the middle ages in England and France
Arnold, Hugh
Art, Medieval; Glass painting and staining -- England; Glass painting and staining -- France
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.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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