Stained Glass Tours in EnglandSherrill, Charles Hitchcock
History
Stained Glass Tours in England
Sherrill, Charles Hitchcock
Cathedrals -- England; England -- Description and travel; Glass painting and staining -- England
An exquisite sense of balance seems to prevail throughout the interior,
and in no feature of the decoration is it so noticeable as in the
windows. The large expanse of each is broken into two parts by a
horizontal transom, and both the upper and lower divisions are again
subdivided, since the central lancet of each contains a figure in
Renaissance canopy over a similar figure below in the pedestal. This
leaves a space two lancets wide on either side both above and below, and
each of these spaces contains a large subject. This method of avoiding
the monotony which would have been caused by the singlet-lancet
treatment is carried out along both of the long sides. The nine lancets
in the large east window permit the introduction of three pictures
above, each spreading over three lancets, and the same number below.
The three in the upper row set forth the Crucifixion, the central one
displaying the usual subject of Christ crucified between the two
thieves, while to the left is the preparation of the crosses, and to the
right the taking down from the cross. The blues in these pictures are
particularly fine. Above in the traceries are red Lancastrian roses, as
well as some Tudor ones of red and white combined. These roses are
frequently repeated in the carvings of both stone and wood, as is also
the portcullis badge of the Tudors. The beautifully carved wooden
panelling about the walls of the choir is rivalled by the rich stone
screens that shut off the lateral chapels from the nave.
There is some seventeenth century glass in the chapel of Peterhouse
College which should be seen, if only to learn how windows should not be
coloured, for the thick application of blues and other tints have
rendered the glass here and there almost opaque. There was in England
about that time a good deal of thickly coloured, and therefore
unsatisfactory, glass. One does not have to see many examples of it
before the conclusion becomes inevitable that the English glaziers would
better have followed the example of the Frenchmen, who, when their art
became moribund at the end of the sixteenth century, let it die and gave
it decent burial!
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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