Painting on Glass mentioned by Historians in the Third Century of our Era.--Glazed Windows at Brioude in the Sixth Century.--Coloured Glass at St. John Lateran and St. Peter’s in Rome.--Church-Windows of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries in France: Saint-Denis, Sens, Poitiers, Chartres, Rheims, &c.--In the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries the Art was at its Zenith.--Jean Cousin.--The Célestins of Paris; Saint-Gervais.--Robert Pinaigrier and his Sons.--Bernard Palissy decorates the Chapel of the Castle of Ecouen.--Foreign Art; Albert Dürer. We have already established the fact that the art of manufacturing and colouring glass was known to the most ancient nations; and, says Champollion-Figeac, “if we study the various fragments of this fragile substance that have been handed down to our time, if we take into consideration the varied ornamentation with which they are covered, even the human figures which some of them represent, it would be difficult to assert that antiquity was unacquainted with the means of combining glass with painting. If antiquity did not produce what are now called painted-windows, the real cause doubtless was because the custom of employing glass in windows did not then exist.” Some few specimens of it have, however, been found in the windows of the houses exhumed at Pompeii; but this must have been an exception, for the third century of our era is the earliest date in which traces are found in history of window-glass being used in buildings; and we must bring down our researches as late as the times of St. John Chrysostom and St. Jerome (the fourth century) in order to find any reliable affirmation as to its adoption. In the sixth century Gregory of Tours relates that a soldier broke the glass-window of a church at Brioude in order to enter it secretly and commit robbery; and we know that when this prelate caused the restoration of the Church of St. Martin of Tours, he took care to fill its windows with glass “of varied colours.” About the same time Fortunatus, the poet-bishop of Poitiers, highly extols the splendour of the glass-window of a church in Paris, the name of which he does not mention; but the learned investigations of Foncemagne with reference to the first kings of France inform us that the church built at Paris by Childebert I. in honour of the Holy Cross and St. Vincent, as well as the churches of Lyons and Bourges, were closed in with glass-windows. Du Cange, in his “Constantinople Chrétienne,” describes the glass-windows of the basilica of St. Sophia, rebuilt by Justinian; and Paul, the Silentiary,[28] dwells with enthusiasm on the marvellous effect produced by the rays of the sun upon this assemblage of various coloured glasses.