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
These windows show a progressive increase in the use of white for
flesh colour instead of the brownish pink formerly used. At first,
white is used only for women's faces, and then for those of saints of
both sexes, brown-pink continuing to be used for other people till
quite the middle of the century or later. Stain is not used on the
hair at first, but sometimes a thin brown matt of enamel is laid all
over the hair which at a distance has almost the effect of stain.
[Sidenote: The sixth window in the north aisle.]
The sixth window on the north side is, I think, a good many years
later in date than these ten windows we have been considering, and is
much less beautiful. A canopy and border from it are shown in Plate
XVIII.a on the right. Although the same general arrangement is adhered
to as in the other windows, the treatment is much coarser; the
crockets of the canopies are big, heavy, and ugly, of a
brownish-yellow pot-metal, but at the same time stain is freely,
indeed lavishly, used, not only in the canopies and borders but, for
the first time in the Cathedral, in the quarries of the grisaille as
well. The borders of heraldry or little figures have given way to
running patterns of natural foliage of the more common fourteenth
century type. There are four different patterns of these borders in
the window, so that some probably came from another window of the same
date, perhaps in the now empty seventh window.
[Sidenote: The west windows.]
Later still are the three west windows and the sixth in the south
aisle which mark a further stage in development. Here we have at last
a definite date to help us, for the contract with the glazier, one
Robert, is still in existence and is dated 1338, so we may assume the
windows were finished about 1340. It is difficult to judge these
windows fairly, for they were subjected to a most drastic restoration
in the eighteenth century, and the great central one is further
disfigured by protective quarry glazing on the outside, which reduces
it to a dirty brown. I do not think, however, that they can ever have
been, comparatively speaking, very good, and I am inclined to look
upon them as perhaps the poorest work of the Middle Ages. Plate XIX.
shows one light of the northernmost of the three, that at the west end
of the north aisle. It will be seen that the canopy has now grown to
an absurd height and fills the whole light, and neither in its
proportions nor in its details is it very graceful. The border is now
growing narrower and narrower, and is eventually doomed to disappear
altogether. The crockets of the gable are the only yellow pot-metal
used, silver stain being used everywhere else, and not very
artistically, though how far this is due to the restorer it is
difficult to say.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIII
DETAILS, FROM ST. OUEN, ROUEN
Fourteenth Century]
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