TABLE OF CONTENTS.

BOOK I.
THE COURSE OF CRAFTSMANSHIP.
Chap.Page
I.The Beginnings of Glass[1]
II.The Making of a Window[5]
III.Glazing[15]
IV.Early Mosaic Windows[32]
V.Painted Mosaic[43]
VI.Glass Painting (Mediæval)[59]
VII.Glass Painting (Renaissance)[67]
VIII.Enamel Painting[77]
IX.The Needle-point in Glass Painting[87]
X.The Resources of the Glass Worker (A RECAPITULATION)[95]
BOOK II.
THE COURSE OF DESIGN.
XI.The Design of Early Glass[111]
XII.Medallion Windows[123]
XIII.Early Grisaille[137]
XIV.Windows of many Lights[151]
XV.Middle Gothic Detail[162]
XVI.Late Gothic Windows[178]
XVII.Sixteenth Century Windows[201]
XVIII.Later Renaissance Windows[220]
XIX.Picture Windows[236]
XX.Landscape in Glass[251]
XXI.Italian Glass[260]
XXII.Tracery Lights and Rose Windows[272]
XXIII.Quarry Windows[283]
XXIV.Domestic Glass[296]
XXV.The Use of the Canopy[311]
XXVI.A Plea for Ornament[317]
BOOK III.
BY THE WAY.
XXVII.The Characteristics of Style[322]
XXVIII.Style in Modern Glass (a Postscript)[354]
XXIX.Jesse Windows, and other Exceptions in Design[360]
XXX.Story Windows[371]
XXXI.How to see Windows[380]
XXXII.Windows worth Seeing[385]
XXXIII.A Word on Restoration[404]

WINDOWS, A BOOK ABOUT STAINED GLASS
BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNINGS OF GLASS.

The point of view from which the subject of stained glass is approached in these chapters relieves me, happily, from the very difficult task of determining the date or the whereabouts of the remote origin of coloured windows, and the still remoter beginnings of glass itself. The briefest summary of scarcely disputable facts bearing upon the evolution of the art of window making, is here enough. We need not vex our minds with speculation.

White glass (and that of extreme purity) would seem to have been known to the Chinese as long ago as 2300 B.C., for they were then already using astronomical instruments, of which the lenses were presumably of glass. Of coloured glass there is yet earlier record. Egyptologists tell us that at least five if not six thousand years ago the Egyptians made jewels of glass. Indeed, it is more than probable that this was the earliest use to which stained glass was put, and that the very raison d’être of glass making was a species of forgery. In some of the most ancient tombs have been found scarabs of glass in deliberate imitation of rubies and emeralds, sapphires and other precious stones. The glass beads found broadcast in three quarters of the globe were quite possibly passed off by Phœnician traders upon the confiding barbarian as jewels of great price. At all events, glass beads, according to Sir John Lubbock, were in use in the bronze age; and, if we may trust the evidence of etymology, “bedes” are perhaps as ancient as praying.

Apart from trickery and fraud, to imitate seems to be a foible of humanity. The Greeks and their Roman successors made glass in imitation of agate and onyx and all kinds of precious marbles. They devised also coloured glass coated with white glass, which could be cut cameo-fashion—a kind of glass much used, though in a different way, in later Mediæval windows.

The Venetians carried further the pretty Greek invention of embedding vitreous threads of milky white or colour in clear glass, the most beautiful form of which is that known as latticelli, or reticelli (reticulated or lace glass), from the elaborate twisting and interlacing of the threads; but nothing certain seems to be known about Venetian glass until the end of the eleventh century, although by the thirteenth the neighbouring island of Murano was famous for its production. The Venetians found a new stone to imitate, aventurine, and they imitated it marvellously.

So far, however, glass was used in the first instance for jewellery, and in the second for vessels of various kinds. Its use in architecture was confined mainly to mosaic, originally, no doubt, to supply the place of brighter tints not forthcoming in marble.

Of the use of glass in windows there is not very ancient mention. The climate of Greece or Egypt, and the way of life there, gave scant occasion for it. But at Herculaneum and Pompeii, there have been found fair sized slabs of window glass, not of very perfect manufacture, apparently cast, and probably at no time very translucent. Remains also of what was presumably window glass have been found among the ruins of Roman villas in England. In the basilicas of Christian Rome the arched window openings were sometimes filled with slabs of marble, in which were piercings to receive glass (which may or may not have been coloured), foreshadowing, so to speak, the plate tracery of Early Gothic builders. According to M. Lévy, the windows of Early Mediæval Flemish churches were often filled in this Roman way with plaques of stone pierced with circular openings to receive glass.

Another Roman practice was to set panes of glass in bronze or copper framing, and even in lead. Here we have the beginning of the practice identified with Mediæval glaziers.

There is no reason to suppose that the ancients practised glass painting as we understand it. Discs of Greek glass have been found which are indeed painted, but not (I imagine) with colour fused with the material; and certainly these were not used for windows.

The very early Christians were not in a position to indulge in, or even to desire, luxuries such as stained glass windows, but St. Jerome and St. Chrysostom make allusion to them. It is pretty certain that these must have been simple mosaics in stained glass, unpainted: one reads that between the lines of the records that have come down to us.

Stained and painted glass, such as we find in the earliest existing Mediæval windows, may possibly date back to the reign of Charlemagne (800), but it may safely be said not to occur earlier than the Holy Roman Empire. A couple of hundred years later mention of it begins to occur rather frequently in Church records; and there is one particular account of the furnishing of the chapel of the first Benedictine Monastery at Monte Cassino with a whole series of windows in 1066—which fixes the date of the Norman Conquest as a period at which stained glass windows can no longer have been uncommon. The Cistercian interdict, restricting the order to the use of white glass (1134), argues something like ecclesiastical over-indulgence in rich windows before the middle of the next century.

Fragments, more or less plentiful, of the very earliest glass may still remain embedded in windows of a later period (the material was too precious not to have been carefully preserved); but archæologists appear to be agreed that no complete window of the ninth or tenth century has been preserved, and that even of the eleventh there is nothing that can quite certainly be identified. After that doctors begin to differ. But the general consensus of opinion is, that there is comparatively little that can be incontrovertibly set down even to the twelfth century. The great mass of Early Gothic Glass belongs indubitably to the thirteenth century; and when one speaks of Early Glass it is usually thirteenth century work which is meant.

The remote origin of glass, then, remains for ever lost in the mist of legendary days. There is even a fable to the effect that it dates from the building of the Tower of Babel, when God’s fire from heaven vitrified the bricks employed by its too presumptuous builders.

Coloured glass comes to us from the East; that much it is safe to conclude. From ancient Egypt, probably, the art of the glass-worker found its way to Phœnicia, thence to Greece and Rome, and so to Byzantium, Venice, and eventually France, where stained glass windows, as we know them, first occur.

It is probably to the French that Europe owes the introduction of coloured windows, a colony of Venetian glass-workers having, they say, settled at Limoges in the year 979.

Some of the earliest French glass is to be found at Chartres, Le Mans, Angers, Reims, and Châlons-sûr-Marne; and at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, at Paris, there are some fragments of twelfth century work which may be more conveniently examined than the work in sitû. The oldest to which one can assign a definite date is that at St. Denis (1108) but its value is almost nullified by expert restoration.

In Germany the oldest date is ascribed to some small windows at Augsburg, executed, it is said, by the monks of Tegernsee about the year 1000. There is also a certain amount of twelfth century work incorporated in the later windows at Strasbourg. The oldest remains of glass in England are, in all probability, certain fragments in the nave of York Minster. The more important windows at Canterbury, Salisbury, and Lincoln are of the thirteenth century.

CHAPTER II.
THE MAKING OF A WINDOW.

Since it is proposed to approach the subject of stained glass in the first place from the workmanlike and artistic, rather than the historical or antiquarian, point of view, it may be as well to begin by explaining precisely what a stained glass window is.

It is usual to confound “stained” with “painted” glass. Literally speaking, these are two quite distinct things. Stained glass is glass which is coloured, as the phrase goes, “in the pot;” that is to say, there is mixed with the molten white glass a metallic oxide which stains it green, yellow, blue, purple, and so on, as the case may be; for which reason this self-tinted glass is called “pot-metal.” This is a term which will recur again and again. Once for all, “pot-metal” is glass in which the colour is in the glass and not painted upon it.

It goes without explanation that, each separate sheet of pot-metal glass being all of one colour, a varicoloured window can only be produced in it by breaking up the sheets and putting them together in the form of a mosaic: in fact, that is how the earliest windows were executed, and they go by the name of mosaic glass. The glass is, however, not broken up into tesseræ, but shaped according to the forms of the design. In short, those portions of it which are white have to be cut out of a sheet of white glass, those which are blue out of a sheet of blue glass, those which are yellow out of a sheet of yellow, and so on; and it is these pieces of variously tinted glass, bound together by strips of lead, just as the tesseræ of a pavement or wall picture are held in place by cement, which constitute a stained glass window. The artist is as yet not concerned in painting, but in glazing—that is to say, putting together little bits of glass, just as an inlayer does, or as a mosaic worker puts together pieces of wood, or marble, or burnt clay, or even opaque glass.

There is illustrated [opposite] a piece of Old Burmese incrusted decoration, a mosaic of white and coloured glass bound together by strips of metal, which, were it but clear instead of silvered at the back, would be precisely the same thing as an early mosaic window, even to the completion of the face by means of paint—of which more presently. In painted glass, on the other hand, the colour is not in the glass but upon it, more or less firmly attached to it by the action of the fire. A metallic colour which has some affinity with glass, or which is ground up with finely powdered glass, is used as a pigment, precisely as ceramic colours are used in pottery painting. The painted glass is then put into a kiln and heated to the temperature at which it is on the point of melting, whilst the colour actually does melt into it. By this means it is possible to paint a coloured picture upon a single sheet of white glass, as has been proved at Sèvres.

Strictly speaking, then, stained and painted glass are the very opposite one to the other. But in practice the two processes of glazing and painting were never kept apart. The very earliest glass was no doubt pure mosaic. It was only in our own day that the achievement (scientific rather than artistic) of a painted window of any size, independent of glazier’s work, was possible. Painting was at first always subsidiary to glazier’s work; after that, for a time, glazier and painter worked hand in hand upon equal terms; eventually the painter took precedence, and the glazier became ever more and more subservient to him. But from the twelfth to the seventeenth century there is little of what we call, rather loosely, sometimes “stained” and sometimes “painted” glass, in which there is not both staining and painting—that is to say, stained glass is used, and there is painting upon it. The difference is that in the earlier work the painting is only used to help out the stained glass, and in the later the stained glass is introduced to help the painting.

1. INCRUSTED GLASS MOSAIC, BURMESE (B. M.).
“Photo-Tint,” by James Akerman, London W. C.

That amounts, it may be thought, to much the same thing; and there does come a point where staining and painting fulfil each such an important part in the window that it is difficult to say which is the predominating partner in the concern. For the most part, however, there is no manner of doubt as to which practice was uppermost in the designer’s mind, as to the idea with which he set out, painting or glazing; and it makes all the difference in the work—the difference, for example, between a window of the thirteenth century and one of the sixteenth, a difference about which a child could scarcely make a mistake, once it had been pointed out to him.

Here perhaps it will be as well to describe, once for all, the making of a mosaic window, and the part taken in it by the glazier and the painter respectively. It will be easier then to discriminate between the two processes employed, and to discuss them each in relation to the other.

The actual construction of an early window is very much like the putting together of a puzzle. The puzzle of our childhood usually took the form of a map. It has occurred to me, therefore, to show how an artist working strictly after the manner of the thirteenth century—the period, that is to say, when painting was subsidiary to glazing—would set about putting into glass a map of modern Italy. In the first place, he would draw his map to the size required. This he would do with the utmost precision, firmly marking upon the paper (the mediæval artist would have drawn directly on his wooden bench) the boundary line of each separate patch of colour in his design. Then, according to the colour each separate province or division was to be, he would take a separate sheet of “pot-metal” and lay it over the drawing, so as to be able to trace upon the glass itself the outline of such province or division. That done, he would proceed to cut out or shape the various pieces of glass to the given forms. In the case of a simple and compact province, such as Rome, Tuscany, Umbria ([overleaf]), that would be easy enough. On the other hand, a more irregular shape, say the province of Naples, with its promontories, would present considerable difficulties—difficulties practically insuperable by the early glazier, to whom the diamond as a cutting instrument was unknown, and whose appliances for shaping were of the rudest and most rudimentary.

If with the point of a red-hot iron you describe upon a sheet of glass a line, and then, taking the material between your two hands, proceed to snap it across, the fracture will take approximately the direction of the line thus drawn. That is how the thirteenth century glazier went to work, subsequently with a notched iron instrument, or “grozing iron” as it was called, laboriously chipping away the edges until he had reduced each piece of glass to the precise shape he wanted.

It will be seen at once that the simpler the line and the easier its sweep the more likely the glass would be to break clean to the line, whereas in the case of a jagged or irregular line there would always be great danger that at any one sharp turn in it the fracture would take that convenient opportunity of going in the way it should not. For example, the south coast of Italy would be dangerous. You might draw the line of the sole of the foot, but when it came to breaking the glass the high heel would be sure to snap off (there is a little nick there designed as if for the purpose of bringing about that catastrophe), and similarly that over-delicate instep would certainly not bear the strain put upon it, and would be bound to give way. It should be mentioned that even were such pieces once safely cut (which would nowadays be possible) the glass would surely crack at those points the first time there was any pressure of wind upon the window, and so the prudent man would still forestall that event by designing his glass as it could conveniently be cut, without attempting any tour de force, and strengthening it at the weak points with a line of lead, as has been done in the glass map [opposite]. There is a jutting promontory on the coast of Africa, which, even if safely cut, would be sure to break sooner or later at the point indicated by the dotted line.

The scale of execution would determine whether each or any province could be cut out of a single sheet of glass, but the lines of latitude and longitude would give an opportunity of using often three or four pieces of glass to a province without introducing lines which formed no part of the design. That, however, would be contrary to early usage, which was never to make use of the leads as independent lines, but only as boundaries between two colours. There is a reason for this reticence. You will see that in the surface of the sea, where the latitudinal and longitudinal lines come in most usefully, it is necessary to use also other leads, which mean nothing but that a joint is there desirable. These constructional leads, when they merely break up a background, are quite unobjectionable—they even give an opportunity of getting variety in the colour of the ground—but when some of the leads are meant to assert themselves as drawing lines and some are not, the result is inevitably confused.

2. THE WAY A WINDOW IS GLAZED.

All that the glass gives us in our mosaic map is the local colour of sea and land—the sea, let us say, dark blue, the countries, provinces, and islands each of its own distinctive tint. When it comes to giving their names, it would be possible indeed on a very large scale to cut the letters out of glass of darker colour, and glaze them in as shown in the title word “Italy.” That would involve, as will be seen, a network of connecting lead lines. On a much smaller scale there would be nothing for it but to have recourse to the supplementary process, and paint them. The words Germany, Austria, Turkey, Naples, Sicily, and the rest would have to be simply painted in opaque colour upon the translucent glass.

But, once we have begun to use paint, there are intermediate ways between these two methods of inscription, either of which would be adopted according to the scale of the lettering. These are shown in the names of the seas. In the word “Mediterranean” each separate letter would be cut out of a piece of glass, corresponding as nearly as possible to its general outline or circumference, and its shape would be made perfect by “painting out”—that is to say, by obscuring with solid pigment that part of the glass (indicated by dots in the drawing) which was meant to retire into the background. Presuming this wording to be in a light colour and the background darkish, this amount of painting would, as a matter of fact, be quite lost in the dark colour. In the lesser descriptions “Tyrrhenian” and “Adriatic Sea,” each separate word, instead of each letter, would be cut out of one piece of glass (or perhaps two in the longer words), and the background would be painted out as already described.

Paint would further be used to indicate the rivers, the mountains, the towns, or any other detail it was necessary to give, as well as to mark such indentations in the coastline as were too minute to be followed by the thick lead. As a matter of practice, it is usual to paint a marginal line of opaque colour round the glass representing just a little more than that portion eventually to be covered by the flange of the lead, so as to make sure that that will not by any chance cut off from view what may be an important feature in the design.

For example, the mere projection of a lead which too nearly approached the delicate profile of a small face might easily destroy its outline. The glazier’s lead, it should be explained, is a wire of about a quarter of an inch diameter, deeply grooved on two sides for the insertion of the glass. Imagine the surfaces exposed to view on each face of the window to be flattened, and you have a section very much like the letter H, the uprights representing the flanges, and the cross-bar the “core,” which holds them together and supports the glass mosaic.

The process of painting employed so far is of the simplest; it consists merely in obscuring the glass with solid paint. This is laid on with a long-haired pencil or “tracing brush.” The paint itself may be mixed with oil or gum and water, or any medium which will temporarily attach it to the glass and disappear in the kiln; for the real fixing of the paint is done solely by the action of the fire. The pigment employed consists, that is to say, of per-oxides of iron and manganese ground up with a sufficient amount of powdered flint-glass or some equivalent silicate, which by the action of the fire is fused with the glass (reduced to very nearly red heat), and becomes practically part and parcel of it.

Whenever a glass painter speaks of painted glass that is what he means—viz., that the colour is thus indelibly burnt in. After the middle of the sixteenth century various metallic oxides were used to produce various more or less transparent pigments (enamel colours as they are called to distinguish them from the pot-metal colours), but in the thirteenth century transparent enamel colours were as yet unknown to the glass painter, and he confined himself to the solid deep brown pigment already spoken of—an enamel also, strictly speaking, but by no means to be confounded with the enamel colours of later centuries. Those were colours used for colour’s sake; this is simply an opaque substance used solely on account of its capacity to stop out so much of the colour of pot-metal glass as may be necessary in order to define form and give the drawing of detail; and in effect the brown, when seen against the light, does not tell as colour at all but merely as so much blackness. The only colour in the window is the colour of the various component pieces of glass. Thus in the case of an early figure ([page 33]) the face would be cut out of a sheet of pinkish glass and the features painted upon it in brown lines; each garment would be cut out of the tint it was meant to be, and the folds of the drapery outlined upon the pot-metal. In like manner a tree would be cut out of green glass, its stem perhaps out of brown, and only the forms of the leaves, and their veining, if any, would be traced in paint. In the execution of the map there is no occasion for further painting than this simplest and fittest kind of work, little more than the glazier would himself have done had his means allowed him. And in the very earliest glass the painter was almost as sparing of paint as this: he did, however—it was inevitable that he should—use lines, whether in drawing the features of a face or the folds of drapery, which were not quite solid, and which consequently only deepened the colour of the pot-metal, and did not quite obscure it: he went so far even as to pass a smear of still thinner colour, a half tint or less, over portions of the glass which he wished to lower in tone. He began, in fact, however tentatively, to introduce shading. Happily he was careful always to use it only as a softening influence in his design, and never to sacrifice to it anything of the intrinsic beauty and brilliancy of his glass.

The glass duly painted and burnt, the puzzle would be put together again on the bench, and bands of lead, grooved at each side to admit and hold the glass, would be inserted between the two pieces. These would be soldered together at the joints where two leads met; a putty-like composition or “cement” would be rubbed into the interstices between lead and glass to stiffen it, and make it air-and water-tight; and, that done, the window was finished.

It would only remain (what would in practice have been done before cementing) to solder to the leads at intervals sundry loose ends of copper-wire, eventually to be twisted round the iron saddle bars let into the stone framework of the window to support it; it would then be ready to be fixed in its place.

In contradistinction to the mosaic method of execution adopted by the thirteenth century glazier, a glass painter of the eighteenth century, and perhaps of the seventeenth, would, even though there were no necessity for longitudinal and latitudinal lines, cut up his window into oblong pieces of convenient size, only, of course, parallel and at right angles to one another.

The sea he might or might not glaze in blue glass; here and there perhaps, but not necessarily at all, an occasional province might be leaded in with a piece of pot-metal; but for the most part he would use panes of white glass, and rely for the colour of the provinces upon enamel. He would have no need to separate his enamel colours by a line of lead, and where he wanted a dividing line he would just paint it in opaque brown. This method of glass painting forms an altogether separate division of the subject, not yet under discussion. It is referred to here only by way of contrast, and to emphasise the fact that, though we are in the habit of using the term stained glass rather loosely—though a stained glass window is almost invariably helped out to some extent by painting (unless it be what is technically known as “leaded glass” or “plain glazing”), and though a painted window is seldom altogether innocent of glass that is stained—there are, as a matter of fact, two methods of producing coloured windows, the mosaic and the enamelled; and that however customary it may be to eke out either method by the other more or less, windows divide themselves into two broad divisions, according as it is pot-metal or enamel upon which the artist relies for his effect.

Between these two widely different ideals there are all manners and all degrees of compromise, and methods were employed which, to describe at this point, would only complicate matters. It will be my purpose presently to describe in detail the steps by which mere glazing developed into painted glass, and how painting came to supersede glazing; to show in how far painting was a help to the glazier, and in how far it was to his hurt; to describe, in short, the progress of the glass painter’s art, to better and to worse; and to distinguish, as far as may be, the principles which govern or should govern it.

3. Ancient Arab Window.

CHAPTER III.
GLAZING.

The art of the glass painter was at first only the art of the glazier. To say that may seem like self-contradiction. But it is not so. On the contrary, it is almost literally the truth; and it is difficult to find words which would more vividly express the actual fact.

We are accustomed to think of a painter as using pigment always in some liquid form, and applying it to wood or plaster, canvas or paper, with a brush. Should he lay it on with a palette knife, as he sometimes does, it is painting still. If he could by any possibility put together his colours in mid-air without the aid of paper, canvas, or other solid substance, it would still be painting. This is very much what the worker in stained glass, by the help of strips of intervening lead, practically succeeded in doing.

As a painter places side by side dabs of paint, so the glazier put side by side little pieces of coloured glass. (Glass, you see, was the medium in which his colour was fixed, just as oil, varnish, wax, or gum is the vehicle in which the painter’s pigment is ordinarily held in suspension.) He could execute in this way upon the bench or the sloped easel quite an elaborate pattern in coloured glass; and although, in order to hold the parts together in a window frame, he had perforce to resort to some sort of binding, in lead or what not, he may still reasonably be said, if not actually to have painted in glass, at all events to have worked in it. In fact, until about the twelfth century, there were no glass painters, but only glaziers. Nay, more, it is to glaziers that we owe the glory of the thirteenth century windows, in which, be it remembered, each separate touch of colour is represented by a separate piece of glass, and each separate piece of glass is bounded by a framework of lead connecting it with the neighbouring pieces, whilst the detail added by the painter goes for not very much.

4. Arab Window Lattice, Geometric.

No strictly defined, nor indeed any approximate, date can safely be given at which the art of the glass-worker sprang into existence. Arts do not spring into existence; they grow, developing themselves in most cases very slowly. The art of working in stained glass can only have been the result of a species of evolution. The germ of it lay in the circumstance that glass was originally made in comparatively small pieces (there were no large sheets of glass a thousand years or more ago), and so it was necessary, in order to glaze any but the smallest window opening, that these small pieces should be in some way cemented together. It followed naturally, in days when art was a matter of every-day concern, the common flower of wayside craftsmanship, that the idea of putting these pieces together in more or less ornamental fashion, should occur to the workman, since they must be put together somehow; and so, almost as a matter of course, would be developed the mosaic of transparent glass, which was undoubtedly the form stained glass windows first took.

It has been suggested that in some of the earliest windows the glazing is meant to take the form of tesseræ; but the examples instanced in support of that idea afford very little ground for supposing any such intention on the part of the first glass-workers. It may more reasonably be presumed that any resemblance there may be between early glass and earlier wall mosaic comes of working in the same way; like methods inevitably lead to like results.

It is by no means certain, even, that the first glaziers were directly inspired by mosaic, whether of marble or of opaque glass. They were probably much more immediately influenced by the work of the enameller.

5. Arab Lattice, Geometric.

That may appear at the first mention strange, considering what has been said about the absolute divergence between mosaic and enamelled glass. But it must be remembered that enamelling itself among the Lombard Franks, the Merovingians, and the Anglo-Saxons, was a very different thing from what the Limousin made it in the sixteenth century. It was, in fact, a quite different operation, the only point in common between the two being that they were executed in vitreous colour upon a metal ground. The enamel referred to as having probably influenced the early glazier is of the severer kinds familiar in Byzantine work, and known as champlevé and cloisonné. In the one, you know, the design is scooped out of the metal ground, in the other its outline is bent in flat wire and soldered to the ground. In either case the resulting cells are filled with coloured paste, which, under the action of the fire, vitrifies and becomes embodied with the metal. In champlevé enamel naturally the metal ground is usually a distinguishing feature. In cloisonné the ground as well as the pattern is, of course, in enamel; but in either case the outlines, and, indeed, all drawing lines, are in metal. In cloisonné enamel the metal “cloisons,” as they are called, fulfil precisely the function of the leads in glass windows; and it would have been more convenient to have left altogether out of account the sister process, were it not that, in the painting of quite early glass, the strokes with which the lines of the drapery and suchlike are rendered, bear quite unmistakable likeness to the convention of the Byzantine worker in champlevé. For that matter, one sees also in very early altar-pieces painted on wood, where gold is used for marking the folds of drapery, the very obvious inspiration of Byzantine enamel—but that is rather by the way.

The popular idea of an early window is that of a picture, or series of pictures, very imperfectly rendered. It may much more justly be likened to a magnified plaque of Byzantine enamel with the light shining through it. The Byzantine craftsman, or his descendants, at all events, did produce, in addition to the ordinary opaque enamel, a translucent kind, in imitation presumably of precious stones; and it might very well be that it was from thence the glazier first derived the idea of coloured windows. Quite certainly that was nearer to his thoughts than any form of painting, as we understand painting nowadays; and, what is more, had he aimed deliberately at the effect of enamel (as practised in his day), he could not have got much nearer to it. His proceeding was almost identical with that of the enamel worker. In place of vitreous pastes he used glass itself; in place of brass, lead; and, for supplementary detail, in place of engraved lines, lines traced in paint. Side by side with the early European window glazing, and most likely before it, there was practised in the East a form of stained glass window building of which no mention has yet been made. In the East, also, windows were from an early date built up of little pieces of coloured glass; but the Mohammedan law forbidding all attempt at pictorial representation of animate things, there was no temptation to employ painting; the glazier could do all he wanted without it. His plan was to pierce small openings in large slabs of stone, and in the piercings to set numerous little jewels of coloured glass. The Romans, by the way, appear also to have sometimes filled window spaces with slabs of marble framing discs of coloured glass, but these were comparatively wide apart, more like separate window-lets, each glazed with its small sheet of coloured glass. The Oriental windows, on the contrary, were most elaborately designed, the piercings taking the form of intricate patterns, geometric or floral. Sometimes the design would include an inscription ingeniously turned to ornamental use after the manner of the Moorish decorators of the Alhambra ([page 15]). A further development of the Oriental idea was to imbed the glass in plaster, a process easy enough before the plaster had set hard. This kind of thing is common enough in Cairo to this day, and specimens of it are to be found at the South Kensington Museum.

6. Arab Lattice, Floral.

M. Vogué illustrates in his book, La Syrie Centrale, an important series of windows in the Mosque of Omar (Temple of Jerusalem), erected in 1528, by Sultan Soliman. The plaster, says M. Vogué, was strengthened by ribs of iron and rods of cane imbedded in the stouter divisions of the framework, a precaution not necessary in the smaller Cairene lattices (measuring as a rule about four superficial feet), in which the pattern is simply scooped out of the half-dry plaster.

The piercings in these Oriental windows and window lattices are not made at right angles to the slab of stone or plaster, but are cut through at an angle, varying according to the position and height of the window, with a view to as little interference as possible with the coloured light. The glass, however, being fixed nearest the outside of the window, there is always both shadow and reflection from the deep sides of the openings, much to the enhancement of the mellowness and mystery of colour. In the Temple windows referred to, still further subtlety of effect is arrived at by an outer screen or lattice of faïence. Thus subdued and tempered, even crude glass may be turned to beautiful account.

7. Arab Glazing in Plaster.

Whence the mediæval Arabs got their glass, and the quality of the material, are matters of conjecture. If we may judge by the not very ancient specimens which reach us in this country, the glass used in Cairene lattices is generally thin and raw; but set, as above described, in jewels as it were, isolated each in its separate shadow cell, the poorest material looks rich. The lattices here illustrated are none of them of very early period; but, where the character of design is so traditional and changes so slowly, the actual date of the work, always difficult to determine, matters little.

8. Arab Glazing in Plaster.

It is more than probable, it is almost certain, that the Venetian glass-workers, who in the tenth century brought their art to France, were familiar with the coloured lattices of the Levant; for, as we know, in the middle-ages Venice was the great trading port of Italy, in constant communication with the East. If that was so, the Italians, always prone to imitate, would be sure to found their practice, as they did in other crafts, more or less upon Persian and Arabian models. At all events, there is every reason to suppose that at first they, practically speaking, only did in lead what the Eastern artificer did in stone or plaster, and that the windows which, according to various trustworthy but vague accounts, adorned the early Christian basilicas as early as the sixth century, bore strong likeness to Mohammedan glass—Christianised, so to speak. This is not to unsay what was before said about the affinity of early glass to enamel. A river has not of necessity one only and unmistakable source; and though we may not be able to trace back through the distant years the very fountain of this craft, we may quite certainly affirm that its current was swollen by more than one side-stream, and that its course was shaped by all manner of obstinate circumstances and conditions of the time, before it went to join the broad and brimming stream of early mediæval art.

One more source, at least, there was at which the early glazier drew inspiration—namely, the art of jewel setting. Coloured glass, as was said a while ago, was itself probably first made only in imitation of precious stones, and, being made in small pieces, it had to be set somewhat in the manner of jewellery. In all probability the enameller himself wrought at first only in imitation of jewellery, and afterwards in emulation with it.

Just as white glass was called crystal, and no doubt passed for it, so coloured glass actually went by the name of ruby, sapphire, emerald, and so on. It is recorded even (falsely, of course) how sapphires were ground to powder and mixed with glass to give it its deep blue colour; indeed, this wilful confusion of terms goes far to explain the mystery of the monster jewels of which we read in history or the fable which not so very long ago passed for it. Stories of diamond thrones and emerald tables seem to lead straight into fairyland; but the glass-worker explains such fancies, and brings us back again to reality.

Bearing in mind, then, the preciousness of glass, and the well-kept secrecy with regard to its composition, it is not beyond the bounds of supposition that the glazier of the dark ages not only intended deliberately to imitate jewellery, but meant that his glass should pass with the ignorant (we forget how very ignorant the masses were) for veritably precious stones.

9. Arab Glazing in Plaster.

Even though we exempt glaziers from all charge of trickery, it was inevitable that they should attempt to rival the work of the jeweller, and to do in large what he had done only in small. That certainly they did, and with such success that, even when it comes to glass of the twelfth, and, indeed, of the thirteenth century, when already pictorial considerations begin to enter the mind of the artist, the resemblance is unmistakable.

Try to describe the effect of an early mosaic window, and you are compelled to liken it to jewellery. Jewelled is the only term which expresses it. And the earlier it is the more jewel-like it is in effect.

So long as the workman looked upon his glass as a species of jewellery, it followed, as a matter of course, from the very estimation in which he held his material, that he did not think of obscuring it by paint—defiling it, as he would have held. It is not so much that he would have been ashamed to depend on the painter to put his colour right, as that the thought of such a thing never entered his mind; he was a glazier. It was the painter first thought of that, and his time had not yet come.

Possibly it may have occurred to the reader, apropos of the diagram on [page 10], in which it was shown how far the glazier could go towards the production of a map in glass, that that was not far. Certainly he does not go very far towards making a chart of any geographical value, but he does go a long way towards making a window; for the first and foremost qualities in coloured glass are colour and translucency—and for translucent colour the glazier, after the glass-maker, is alone responsible. It is in some respects very much to be deplored that the Gothic craftsman so early took to the use of supplementary painting, which in the end diverted his attention from a possible development of his craft in a direction not only natural to it but big with possibilities never to this day realised.

10. Glazing in Plaster. South Kensington Museum.

Of richly jewelled Gothic glass all innocent of paint, no single window remains to us; but there are fairly numerous examples extant of pattern windows glazed in white glass, whether in obedience to the Cistercian rule which forbade colour, or with a view to letting light into the churches—and it is to churches, prevalent as domestic glass may once have been, we must now go for our Gothic windows.

Some of this white pattern work is ascribed to a period almost as early as that of any glass we know; but it is almost impossible to speak positively as to the date of anything so extremely simple in its execution; in which there is no technique of painting to tell tales; and which, when once “storied” windows came into fashion, was probably left to the tender mercies of lesser craftsmen, who may not have disdained to save themselves the trouble of design, and to repeat the old, old patterns.

The earlier glazier, it was said, painted, figuratively speaking, in glass. It is scarcely a figure of speech to say that he drew in leadwork.

This mode of draughtsmanship was employed in all strictly mosaic glass; but it is in the white windows (or the pale green windows, which were the nearest he could get to white, and which it is convenient to call white) that this drawing with the leads is most apparent—in patterns, that is to say, in which the design is formed entirely by the leadwork.

11. Plain Glazing, Bonlieu.

You have only to look at such patterns as Nos. 11 to 17, to see how this was so; they are all designed in outline, and the outline is given in lead. It is perfectly plain there how every separate line the glazier laid down in charcoal upon his bench stood for a strip of lead. And, looking at the glass, we see that it is the lead which makes the pattern. It is no straining of terms to call this designing in the lead. The ingenuity in designing such patterns as those [below] and [opposite], which is very considerable, consists in so scheming them that every lead line shall fulfil alike a constructive and an artistic function; that is to say, that every line in the design shall be necessary to its artistic effect, that there shall be no lead line which is not an outline, no outline which is not a lead.

12. Châlons.

It is not always that the glazier was so conscientious as this. M. Viollet le Duc pointed out, in the most helpful article in his famous Dictionary of Architecture, under the head of Vitrail, how in the little window from Bonlieu, here illustrated, the mediæval craftsman resorted to a dodge, more ingenious than ingenuous, by which he managed to economise labour. Each separate lead line there does not enclose a separate piece of glass. The lines are all of lead; but some of them are mere dummies, strips of metal, holding nothing, carried across the face of the glass only, and soldered on to the more businesslike leads at each end. The extent of bonâ fide glazing is indicated in the right-hand corner of the drawing. I confess I was inclined at first to think that Viollet le Duc might, in ascribing this glass to the twelfth century, very possibly have dated it too far back; for this is the kind of trick one would more naturally expect from the later and more sophisticated workman; but I have since come upon the same device myself, both at Reims and Châlons, in work certainly as old as the thirteenth century. You see, cutting the glass was the difficulty in those days, and sometimes it was shirked.

13. Châlons.

It should be noted that the subterfuge employed at Bonlieu and in the specimens from Châlons, [opposite], was not in order to evade any difficulty in glazing—the designs present none—but merely to save trouble. There would have been more occasion for evasion in executing the design from Aix-la-Chapelle ([14]), where the sharp points of the fleur-de-lys give background shapes difficult for the glazier to cut. It will be noticed that to the left of the panel one of the points joins the necking-piece, which holds the fleur-de-lys together. That is a much more practical piece of glazing than the free point, which presents a difficulty in cutting the background, indicative of the late period to which the glass belongs. The earlier mediæval glazier worked with primitive tools, which kept him perforce within the bounds of simplicity and dignified restraint.

In white windows, so called, he did not by any means confine himself wholly to the use of what it is convenient to call “white glass.” From a very early date, perhaps from the very first, he would enrich it with some slight amount of colour. Having devised, as it were, a lattice of white lines, as in the left-hand pattern from Salisbury ([overleaf]), it was a very simple thing to fill here and there a division of his design with a piece of coloured instead of white glass, as in the pattern next to it in order. The third pattern, to the right, shows how he would even introduce a separate jewel of colour, perhaps painted, which had to be connected with the design by leads forming no part of the pattern.

Colour spots are more ingeniously introduced in the example from Brabourne Church, Kent, (said to be Norman) where the darker tints are ingeniously thrown into the background. But here again, although this is perhaps as early a specimen of glazing as we have in this country, the glazier resorts in his central rosettes to the aid of paint.

14. Aix-la-Chapelle.

It will be observed that in the marginal lines which frame this window, and again in the white bands in two out of the three patterns from Salisbury, leads are introduced which have only a constructional use, and rather confuse the design. That they do not absolutely destroy it is due to its marked simplicity, and to the proportion of the narrow bands to the broad spaces. This is yet more clearly marked in the very satisfactory glazing designs from S. Serge at Angers. The fact is, there is a limit to the possibilities of design, such as that from Sens ([page 96]), in which literally only four leads (viz., those from the points of the central diamond shape) are introduced wholly and solely for strength; and when it comes to windows of any considerable size, such as clerestory windows, to which plain glazing is peculiarly suited, leads which merely strengthen become absolutely necessary. The art of the designer consists in so scheming them that they shall not seriously interfere with the pattern.

15. South Transept, Salisbury.

Were the pattern in lines of colour upon white, the crosslines strengthening them would of course be lost in the darker tint; but, as it happens, we do not find in the earliest glazing lines of interlacing colour, though they occur by way of border lines, as at S. Serge ([below]), where a marginal line of yellow is enclosed between strips of white.

16. Brabourne Church Kent.

The interlacing character of several of the white glazing patterns illustrated betrays of course Romanesque influence; but there would not have been so many designs consisting of interlacing bands of white upon a white ground, enclosing, at intervals more or less rare, what had best be called jewels of colour, had it not been that the forms of interlacing strapwork lend themselves kindly to glazing.

17. S. Serge, Angers.

Every time a strap disappears, as it were, behind another, you have just the break in its continuity which the glazier desires, and if only the interlacings are frequent enough (as on [page 96]) they give him all he wants.

So far the examples illustrated are, for the most part, in outline; that is to say, on a ground of white the pattern appears as a network of leads, flowing or geometric as the case may be, emphasised here and there by a touch of dark colour, focussing them as it were. Without such points of colour a design looks sometimes too much like a mere outline, meant to be filled in with colour, and, in short, unfinished; but as yet the darker and lighter tints of white are not used to emphasise the pattern, as they would have done if, for example, the interlacing straps had been glazed in a slightly purer white than the ground. On the contrary, notwithstanding the very great variety in the tints of greenish-white, which resulted from the chemically imperfect manufacture of the glass, they were employed very much at haphazard, and so far from ever defining the design, go to obviate anything harsh or mechanical there may be in it. There is else, of course, a tendency in geometric pattern to look too merely geometric. One wants always to feel it is a window that is there, and not just so many feet of diaper.

Another practical form of design is that in which it is not the network of leads, but the spaces they inclose, which constitutes the pattern; where lines are not so much thought of as masses; where the main consideration is colour, and contour is of quite secondary account. The leads fulfil still their artistic function of marking the division of the colours, as they fulfil the practical one of binding the bits of coloured glass together; the glazier still draws in lead lines; but attention is not called to them especially; indeed, with identically the same lead lines one could produce two or three quite different effects, according as one emphasised by stronger colour one series of shapes or another. In the case of a framework of strictly geometric lines, straight or curved, one gets patterns such as we see in marble inlay. The slab of marble mosaic and the stained glass border [opposite] are more than alike; the one is simply a carrying further of the other. The glass design might just as well have been executed in marble, or the marble design in glass. In the upper church at Assisi are some borders of geometric inlay, one of which is given on [page 96], identical in character with the minute geometric inlay (which, by the way, was also in glass, though opaque), with which the Cosmati illuminated, so to speak, their marble shrines and monuments. This species of pattern work, appropriate as it is to glass mosaic, transparent as well as opaque, does not seem to have been much used in glass, even in Italy; where it does occur it is in association, as at Assisi and Orvieto, with painted work of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, though from its Byzantine character it might as well be centuries earlier. It appears that this, which was, theoretically, the simplest and most obvious form of leaded pattern work, and might, therefore, well have been the earliest, was never adopted to anything like the extent to which interlacing ornament was carried.

18. Marble Mosaic, Roman.

Mediæval glaziers did not attempt anything like foliated ornament in leaded glass, and for good reason. In such work the difficulty of doing without lines detrimental to the design is greatly increased, whereas abstract forms you can bend to your will, as you can bend your strip of lead. The more natural the forms employed the more nature has to be considered in rendering them, and nature declines to go always in the direction of simple glazing. It might seem easy enough (to those who do not know the difficulty) to glaze together bits of heart-shaped green glass for leaves, and red for petals, with a dot of yellow for the eye of the flower, and to make use of the lead not only for outlines but for the stalks of the leaves and so on, all on a paler ground; but it is not so easy as that. The designer cannot go far without wanting other connecting leads (besides those used for the stalk); and when some leads are meant very emphatically to be seen and some to be ignored, there is no knowing what the actual effect may be: the drawing lines may be quite lost in a network of connecting leads. Again, the mediæval glazier did not, so far as we have any knowledge, build up in lead glazing a boldly pronounced pattern, light on dark or dark on light. This he might easily have done. On a small scale plain glazing must perforce be modest; but, given a scale large enough, almost any design in silhouette can be expressed in plain glazing. You may want in that case plenty of purely constructional leads, not meant to be seen, or in any case meant to be ignored; but if the contrast between design and background be only strong enough (say colour on white or white on colour), they do not in the least hurt the general effect. On the contrary, they are of the utmost use to the workman who knows his materials, enabling him to get that infinite variety of colour which is the crowning charm of glass.

19. Glass, Orvieto.

What the designer of leaded glass had to consider was, in the first place, the difficulty of shaping the pieces. That is now no longer very great, thanks to the diamond, which makes cutting so easy that there is even a danger lest the workman’s skill of hand may outrun his judgment, and tempt him to indulge in useless tours de force. The absurdity of taking the greatest possible pains to the least possible purpose is obvious. The more important consideration is now, therefore, the substantiality of the window once made. Think of the force of a gale of wind and its pressure upon the window: it is tremendous; and glazing does not long keep a smooth face before it. Except there is a solid iron bar to keep it in place, it soon bulges inwards, and presents a surface as undulous, on a smaller scale, as the pavement of St. Mark’s; and, as it begins to yield, snap go the awkwardly shaped pieces of glass which the glazier has been at such pains to cut. The mediæval artist, therefore, exercised no more than common sense, when he shaped the pieces of glass he employed with a view to security, avoiding sharp turns or elbows in the glass, or very long and narrow strips, or even very acutely pointed wedge-shaped pieces. No doubt the difficulty of cutting helped to keep him in the way he should go; probably, also, he was under no temptation to indulge in pieces of glass so large that, incapable of yielding, they were bound to break under pressure of the wind. That he sometimes used pieces so small as in time to get clogged with dust and dirt, was owing to the natural desire to use up the precious fragments which, under his clumsy system of cutting, must have accumulated in great quantity. Where most he showed his mastery was, in foreseeing where the strain would come, and introducing always a lead joint where the crack might occur, anticipating and warding off the danger to come. He was workman enough frankly to accept the limitations of his trade. Occasionally (as at Bonlieu) he may have shirked work; but he accommodated himself to the nature of his materials. Never pretending to do what he could not, he betrayed neither its weakness nor his own.

Mere glazing has here been discussed at a length which perhaps neither existing work of the kind nor the modern practice of the craft (more is the pity) might seem to demand. It is the most modest, the rudest even, of stained glass; but it is the beginning and the foundation of glass window making, and it affects most deeply even the fully developed art of the sixteenth century.

The leading of a window is the framework of its design, the skeleton to be filled out presently and clothed in colour; and, if the anatomy is wrong, nothing will ever make the picture right. The leads are the bones, which it is necessary to study, even though they were intrinsically without interest, for on them depends the form which shall eventually charm us. Beauty is not skin deep: it is the philosophy of the poet which is shallow.

CHAPTER IV.
EARLY MOSAIC WINDOWS.

It has been explained already at how very early a period “stained” glass begins also to be “painted” glass more or less.

But for the fond desire to be something more than an artist—to teach, to preach, to tell a story—the glazier would possibly have been quite content with the mere jewellery of glass, and might have gone on for years, and for generations, using his pot-metal as it left the pot. As it was, working always in the service of the Church, in whose eyes it was of much more importance that a window should be “storied” than that it should be “richly dight,” he found it necessary from the first to adopt the use of paint—not, as already explained, for the purpose of giving colour, but of shutting it out, or at most modifying it. His work was still essentially, and in the first place, mosaic. He conceived his window, that is to say, as made up of a multiplicity of little pieces of coloured glass, the outlines supplied, for the most part, by the strong lines of connecting leadwork, and the details traced in lines of opaque pigment. He still designed with the leads, as I have expressed it, and throughout the thirteenth century (though less emphatically than in the twelfth) his design is commonly quite legible at a distance at which the painted detail is altogether lost; but in designing his leads he had always in view, of course, that they were to be helped out by paint.

20. Figures from Ascension, Le Mans.

In the late thirteenth century or early fourteenth century figure from Troyes, on [page 336], which depends very little indeed upon any painted detail to be deciphered, the lighter figure glazed upon a ground of dark trellis-work is not only readable, but suggestive of considerable feeling; and in the undoubtedly fourteenth century figure on [page 241], where, with the exception of the hands and face, there is absolutely no indication of the paint with which the artist eventually completed his drawing, there is no mistaking the recumbent figure of Jesse, even without any help of colour. But the earlier the glass, the less was there of painting, and the more the burden of design fell upon the glazier. The two figures from Le Mans, here given (generally allowed to belong to about the year 1100) show very plainly both the amount and the character of the painting used, and the extent to which the design depends upon it. There is no mistake about the value of the lead lines there, or the extreme simplicity of the painted detail.

It will be seen that paint is there used for three purposes: to paint out the ground round about the feet, hands, and faces; to mark the folds of the drapery, and just an indication of shading upon it; and to blacken the hair. It was only in thus rendering the human hair that the earliest craftsman ever used paint as local colour. In that case he had a way of scraping out of it lines of light to indicate detail. If such lines showed too bright, it was easy to tone them down with a film of thinner paint. In these particular figures from Le Mans the artist had not yet arrived at that process; but from the very first it was a quite common custom, instead of painting very small ornamental detail, to obscure the glass with solid pigment, and then scrape out the ornament.

21. Hitchin Church.

The fact is, that in early windows a much larger proportion of the glass is obscured, and had need to be obscured, than would be supposed. It will be seen what a considerable area of paint surrounds the feet of the two apostles on [page 33]. This is partly owing to the then difficulty of exactly shaping the pieces of glass employed; but it is largely due to the actual necessity of sufficient area of dark to counteract the tendency of the lighter shades of glass, such as the brownish-pink employed for flesh tints, to spread their rays and obliterate the drawing. Not only would the extremely attenuated fingers, shown in the scraps from Hitchin Church [above] look quite well fleshed in the glass, but it was essential that they should be so painted in order to come out satisfactorily—that is, without the aid of shading, to which painters did not yet much resort. On the contrary, they were at first very chary of half tint—employing it, indeed, for the rounding of flesh and so on, but not to degrade the colour of the glass, small though their palette was.

22. S. Remi, Reims.

Something, however, had to be done to prevent especially the whites, yellows, and pale blues, and in some degree all but the dark colours, from taking more than their due part in the general effect. It was not always possible to reduce the area of the glass of an aggressive tint to the dimensions required. To have reduced a line of white, for example, to the narrowness at which it would tell for what was wanted, would have been to make it so narrow that the accumulation of dust and dirt between the leads would soon have clogged it and blotted it out altogether. What they did was to paint it heavily with pattern. For example, they would paint out great part of a white line and leave only a row of beads, with so much paint between and around them that certainly not more than one-third of the area of the glass was left clear, and the effect at the right distance (as at Angers, [page 116]) would be that of a continuous string of pearls. They would in the same way paint a strip of glass solid, and merely pick out a zig-zag or some such pattern upon it, with or without a marginal thread of light on each side (Le Mans). Rather than lower the brightness of the glass by a tint of pigment they would coat it with solid brown, and pick out upon it a minute diaper of cross-hatched lines and dots, by that means reducing the volume of transmitted light without much interfering with its purity (S. Remi, Reims, [below]). Diaper of more interesting kind afforded a ready means of lowering shades of glass which were too light or too bright for the purpose required, and for supplying in effect the deficiencies of the pot-metal palette. Overleaf are some fragments of diaper pattern so picked out, from Canterbury, which would possibly never have been devised if the designer had had to his hand just the shade of blue glass he wanted. Something certainly of the elaboration of pattern which distinguishes the earliest glass comes of the desire to qualify its colour. Viollet le Duc endeavours to explain with scientific precision which are the colours which spread most, and how they spread. His analysis is useful as well as interesting; but absolute definition of the effect of radiation is possible only with regard to a rigidly fixed range of colours to which no colourist would ever confine himself. A man gets by experience to know the value of his colours in their place, and thinks out his scheme accordingly. He puts, as a matter of course, more painting into pale draperies than into dark, and so on; but to a great extent he acts upon that subtle sort of reasoning which we call feeling. Intuition it may be, but it is the intuition of a man who knows.

The simple method of early execution went hand in hand with equal simplicity of design—the one almost necessitated the other—and the earlier the window the more plainly is its pattern pronounced, light against dark, or, less usually, (as in some most interesting remains of very early glass from Châlons now at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at Paris) in full, strong colour upon white. In twelfth century work especially, figures and ornament alike are always frankly shown en silhouette. Witness the design on [pages 33] and [115]. Similar relief or isolation of the figure against the background is shown in the thirteenth century bishops, occupying two divisions of a rose window at Salisbury, on [page 275]; and again in the little subject from Lyons, where S. Peter is being led off by the gaoler to prison.

23. Canterbury Cathedral.

In proportion as the aim of the artist becomes more pictorial he groups his figures more in clumps (you see indications of that at Canterbury), whence comes much of the confusion of effect characteristic of the thirteenth century as it advances, not in this respect in the direction of improvement. In his haste to tell a story he tells it less effectively. Where an early subject is unintelligible (supposing it to be in good preservation) it is almost invariably owing to the figures not being clearly enough cut out against the background. Isolation of the design seems to be a necessary condition of success in glass of the simple, scarcely painted, kind. In ornament, where the artist had nothing to think of but artistic effect, he invariably and to a much later period defined it unmistakably against contrasting colour. That is illustrated on [page 117], part of a thirteenth century window at Salisbury, and in the border [below], as well as various others of the period, [pages 129], [130], and elsewhere.

It is the almost unanimous verdict of the inexpert that the lead lines very seriously detract from the beauty of early windows. How much more beautiful they would be, it is said, without those ugly black lines! Possibly the expert and the lover of old glass have unconsciously brought themselves not to see what they do not want to see; and the leads may, soberly and judiciously speaking, seriously interfere with the form of the design. But, in the first place, the beauty of early glass is in its colour, not in its form. That is very clearly shown in the illustrations to this chapter and the next; which give, unfortunately, nothing of the beauty and real glory of the glass, but only its design and execution; they appear perhaps in black and white so merely grotesque, that it may be difficult to any one not familiar with the glass itself to understand why so much should be said in its praise. In reality the lack of beauty, especially apparent in the figure drawing of the early glass painters when reduced to monochrome, taken in conjunction with the magnificent effect of many of the earliest windows (which no colourist has ever yet been known to deny) is proof in itself how entirely their art depended upon colour—colour, it should be added, of a quality quite unapproachable by any other medium than that of translucent glass or actual jewellery. No one who appreciates at anything like its full value the magnificence of that colour will think the interference of occasional lead lines a heavy price to pay for it.

24. POITIERS CATHEDRAL. (Compare with [59].)

For—and this is the second point to be explained in reference to leading—the leads, were they never so objectionable, are actually the price we pay for the glory of early glass. It is by their aid we get those mosaics of pot-metal, the depth and richness of which to this day, with all our science of chemistry, we cannot approach by any process of enamelling. Moreover, though merely constructional leads, taking a direction contrary to the design, may at times disturb the eye, (they scarcely ever disturb the effect) they add to the richness of the glass in a way its unlearned admirers little dream. Not only is the depth and intensity of the colour very greatly enhanced by the deep black setting of lead, a veritable network of shade in which jewels of bright colour are caught, but it is by the use of a multiplicity of small pieces of glass (instead of a single sheet, out of which the drapery of a figure could be cut all in one piece—the ideal of the ignorant!), that the supreme beauty of colour is reached. Examine the bloom of a peach or of a child’s complexion, and see how it is made up of specks of blue and grey and purple and yellow amongst the pink and white of which it is supposed to consist. Every artist, of course, knows that a colour is beautiful according to the variety in it; and a “Ruby” background (as it is usually called), which is made up of little bits of glass of various shades of red, not only crimson, scarlet, and orange, but purple and wine-colour of all shades from deepest claret to tawny port, is as far beyond what is possible in a sheet of even red glass as the colour of a lady’s hand is beyond the possible competition of pearl powder or a pink kid glove. Not only, therefore, were the small pieces of glass in early windows, and the consequent leads, inevitable, but they are actually at the very root of its beauty; and the artificer of the dark ages was wiser in his generation than the children of this era of enlightenment. He did not butt his head against immovable obstacles, but built upon them as a foundation. Hence his success, and in it a lesson to the glazier for all time—which was taken to heart (as will be shown presently) by craftsmen even of a period too readily supposed to have been given over entirely to painting upon glass.

25. S. Kunibert, Cologne.

Let there be no misunderstanding about what is claimed for the earliest windows. The method of mosaic, eked out with a minimum of tracing in opaque pigment, does not lend itself very kindly to picture; and it is in ornament that the thirteenth century glazier is pre-eminent. There is even something barbaric about the splendour of his achievement. Might it not be said that in all absolutely ornamental decoration there is something of the barbaric?—which may go to account for the rarity of real ornament, or any true appreciation of it, among modern people.

26. Lyons.

We might not have to scratch the civilised man very deep to reach the savage in him, but he is, at all events, sophisticated enough to have lost his unaffected delight in strong bright colours and “meaningless” twistings of ornament. Be that as it may, the figure work of the thirteenth century window designer is distinctly less perfect than his scrolls and suchlike, partly, it is true, because of his inadequate figure drawing, but partly also because his materials were not well adapted to anything remotely like pictorial representation. The figures in his subjects have, as before said, to be cut out against the background in order to be intelligible. Hence a stiff and ultra-formal scheme of design, and also a certain exaggeration of attitude, which in the hands of a naïve and sometimes almost childish draughtsman becomes absolutely grotesque. This is most strikingly the case in the larger figures, sometimes considerably over lifesize, standing all in a row in the clerestory lights of some of the great French cathedrals.

The scale of these figures gave opportunity (heads all-of-a-piece show that it did not actually make it a necessity) for glazing the faces in several pieces of glass; and it was quite the usual thing, as at Lyons ([opposite]) to glaze the flesh in pinkish-brown, the beard in white or grey or yellow or some dark colour—not seldom blue, which had at a distance very much the value of black—and the eyes in white. Sometimes even, as at Reims, the iris of the eye was not represented by a blot of paint but was itself glazed in blue. The effect of this might have been happier if the lines of the painting had been more of the same strength as the leads, and so strong enough to support them. As it is, the great white eyes start out of the picture and spoil it. They have a way of glaring at you fixedly; there is no speculation in their stare; they look more like huge goggles than live eyes. And it is not these only which are grotesque; the smaller figures in subject windows are, for the most part, rude and crude, to a degree which precludes one, or any one but an archæologist pur sang, from taking them seriously as figure design. They are often really not so much like human figures as “bogies,” ugly enough to frighten a child. What is more to be deplored is that they are so ugly as actually to have frightened away many a would-be artist in glass from the study of them—a study really essential to the proper understanding of his métier; for repellant as those bogey figures may be, they show more effectually than later, more attractive, and much more accomplished painting, the direction in which the glass painter should go, and must go, if he wants to make figures tell, say, in the clerestory of a great church.

Apart from the halo of sentiment about the earliest work—and who shall say how much of that sentiment we bring to it ourselves?—apart from the actual picturesqueness—and how much of that is due to age and accident?—there is in the earliest glass a feeling for the material and a sense of treatment seldom found in the work of more accomplished glass painters. If there is not actually more to be learnt from it than from later and more consummate workmanship, there is at least no danger of its teaching a false gospel, as that may do.

From the grossest and most archaic figures, ungainly in form and fantastic in feature, stiff in pose and extravagant in action, out of all proportion to their place in the window, there are at least two invaluable lessons to be learnt—the value of broad patches of unexpected colour, interrupting that monotony of effect to which the best-considered schemes of ornament incline, and the value of simplicity, directness, and downright rigidity of design. Severity of design is essential to largeness of style; it brings the glass into keeping with the grandeur of a noble church, into tune with the solemn chords of the organ. Modern windows may sometimes astound us by their aggressive cleverness, the old soothe and satisfy at the same time that they humble the devout admirer.

The confused effect of Early glass (except when the figures are on a very large scale) is commonly described as “kaleidoscopic.” That is not a very clever description, and it is rather a misleading one. For, except in the case of the rose or wheel windows, common in France, Early glass is not designed on the radiating lines which the kaleidoscope inevitably gives. It is enough for the casual observer that the effect is made up of broken bits of bright colour; and if they happen to occupy a circular space the likeness is complete to him. But to know the lines on which an Early Gothic window was built, is to see, through all confusion of effect, the evidence of design, and to resent the implication of thoughtless mechanism implied in the word kaleidoscopic. Nevertheless, little as the mediæval glaziers meant it—they were lavish of the thought they put into their art—their glass does often delight us, something as the toy amuses children, because the first impression it produces upon us is a sense of colour, in which there is no too definite form to break the charm. There comes a point in our satisfaction in mere beauty (to some it comes sooner than to others—too soon, perhaps) at which we feel the want of a meaning in it—must find one, or our pleasure in it is spoilt; we even go so far as to put a meaning into it if it is not there; but at first it is the mysterious which most attracts the imagination.

And even afterwards, when the mystery is solved, we are not sorry to forget its meaning for a while, to be free to put our own interpretation upon beauty, or to let it sway us without asking why, just as we are moved by music which carries us we know not where, we care not.

CHAPTER V.
PAINTED MOSAIC GLASS.

The glass so far vaguely spoken of as “Early” belongs to the period when the glazier designed his leads without thinking too much about painting.

27. Chartres.

There followed a period when the workman gave about equal thought to the glazing and the painting of his window.

Then came a time when he thought first of painting, and glazing was a secondary consideration with him.

28. S. Kunibert, Cologne.

According as we contemplate glass painting from the earlier or the later standpoint, from the point of view of glass or of painting, we are sure to prefer one period to the other, to glory perhaps in the advance of painting, or to regret the lesser part that coloured glass eventually plays in the making of a window. To claim for one or the other manner that it is the true and only way, were to betray the prejudice of the partizan. Each justifies itself by the masterly work done in it, each is admirable in its way. It is not until the painter began, as he eventually did, to take no thought of the glass he was using, and the way it was going to be glazed, that he can be said with certainty to have taken the downward road in craftsmanship. We shall come to that soon enough; meanwhile, throughout the Gothic period at least, he kept true to a craftsmanlike ideal, and never quite forsook the traditions of earlier workmanship; and until well into the fourteenth century he began, we may say, with glazing. In the fourteenth century borders [overleaf] and in the figure on [page 47], no less than in the earlier examples on [pages 43] and [46], the glazing lines fulfil a very important part in the design, emphasising the outlines of the forms, if they do not of themselves form an actual pattern. Naturally, once the glazier resorted to the use of paint, he schemed his leads with a view to supplementary painting, and had always a shrewd idea as to the details he meant to add; but it will be clear to any one with the least experience in design that a man might map out the leadwork of such borders as those shown [below] with only the vaguest idea as to how he was going to fill them in with paint, and yet be sure of fitting them with effective foliage. So the architectural canopies on [pages 134], [135], [154], were pretty surely first blocked out according to their lead lines; and not till the design was thus mapped out in colour did the designer begin to draw the detail of his pinnacles and crockets. The invariable adherence to a traditional type of design made it the easier for him to keep in mind the detail to come. For he had not so much to imagine as to remember. He was free, however, always to follow any spontaneous impulse of design.

29. S. Ouen, Rouen.

It was told in [Chapter IV]. how, in the beginning, pigment was used only to paint out the light, to emphasise drawing, and to give detail—such as the features of the face, the curls of the hair, and so on. That was the ruling idea of procedure. In practice, however, it is not very easy to paint perfectly solid lines on glass. At the end of a stroke always, and whenever the brush is not charged full of colour, the lines insensibly get thin, not perfectly opaque, that is to say; and so, in spite of himself, the painter would continually be obtaining something like translucency—a tint, in fact, and not a solid brown. Not to have taken advantage of this half tint, would have been to prove himself something less than a good workman, less than a reasonable one; and he did from the first help out his drawing by a smear of paint, more or less in the nature of shading. In flesh painting of the twelfth century (or attributed to that early date) there are indications of such shading, used, however, with great moderation, and only to supplement the strong lines of solid brown in which the face was mainly drawn. The features were first very determinedly drawn in line (“traced” is the technical term), and then, by way of shade, a slight scum of paint was added.

Still, in thirteenth century work, there is frequently no evidence of such shading; the painter has been quite content with the traced line. In the fourteenth century a looser kind of handling is observed. The painter would trace a head in not quite solid lines of brown, and then strengthen them here and there with perfectly opaque colour, producing by that means a much softer quality of line. In any case, the painting until well into the century was at the best rude, and the half tint, such as it was, used, one may say, to be smeared on. Here again practice followed the line of least resistance. It was difficult with the appliances then in use to paint a gradated tint which would give the effect of modelling; and accordingly very little of the kind was attempted. Eventually, however, the painter began to stipple his smear of shadow, at once softening it and letting light into it.

30. Salisbury.

Towards the end of the century this stippling process was carried a step further. It occurred to the workman to coat his glass all over (or all of it except what was meant to remain quite clear) with thin brown, and then, with a big dry brush, dab it until it assumed a granular or stippled surface (darker or lighter, according to the amount of stippling). This was not only more translucent than the smeared colour but more easily graduated, and capable of being so manipulated, and so softened at the edges, as readily to give a very fair amount of modelling. This shading was often supplemented by dark lines or hatchings put in with a brush, as well as by lines scraped out of the tint to lighten it. But in any case there was for a while nothing like heavy shading. Even in work belonging to the fifteenth century, and especially in English glass, as at York, Cirencester, Ross, &c., it is quite a common thing to find that the drawing is mainly in line, very delicately done, helped out by the merest hint of shading in tint. This glass is sometimes a little flat in effect, and it is not equal in force to contemporary foreign work; but it is peculiarly refined in execution, and it has qualities of glass-like sparkle and translucency which more than make amends for any lack of solidity in painting. Solidity is just the one thing we can best dispense with in glass.

A comparison of the two borders on [pages 38] and [175], both German work, will show how little difference of principle there was between the thirteenth century craftsman and his immediate successor. The difference in style between the two is strikingly marked—the one is quite Romanesque in character, the detail of the other is comparatively naturalistic; but when you come to look at the way they are executed, the way the glazing is mapped out, the way the leads emphasise the outlines, whilst paint is only used to make out details which lead could not give—you will see that the new man has altered his mind more with regard to what he wants to do in glass than as to how he wants to do it. Very much might be said with regard to the two figures on [this page] and the [opposite]. The French designer has departed from the archaic composition of the earlier Englishman, and put more life and action into his figure, but there is very little difference in the technique of the two men, less than appears in the illustrations; for, as it happens, one drawing aims at giving the lines of the glass, the other at showing its effect. The fourteenth century figure on [page 51] relies more than these last upon painting. The folds of the saint’s tunic, for example, are not merely traced in outline, but there is some effect of modelling in them.

31. S. Urbain, Troyes.

It will be instructive also to compare the fourteenth century hop pattern on [page 173] with the fourteenth century vine on [page 364], and the fifteenth century example on [page 345]. In the first the method of proceeding is almost as strictly mosaic as though it had been a scroll of the preceding century. Leaves, stalks, and fruits are glazed in light colour upon dark, and bounded by the constructional lines of lead. In the second, though the main forms are still outlined by the leads, much greater use is made of paint: the topmost leaf is in one piece of glass with the stalk of the tree, and all the leaves are relieved by means of shading. In the third the artist has practically drawn his vine scroll, and then thought how best he could glaze it; and the leads come very much as they may.

This last-mentioned proceeding is typical of a period not yet under discussion, but the second illustrates very fairly the supplementary use of paint made in the fourteenth century.

A rather unusual but suggestive form of fourteenth century glazing is shown on [page 176]. It was the almost invariable practice at this period, as in the preceding centuries, to distinguish the pattern, whether of scroll or border, by relieving it against a background of contrasting colour, usually light against dark; but here the border is varicoloured, without other ground than the opaque pigment used for painting out the forms of the leaves, etc., and filling in between them. The method lends itself only to design in which the forms are so closely packed as to leave not too much ground to be filled in. A fair amount of solid paint about the leaves and stalks does no harm. A good deal was used in Early work, and it results in happier effects than when minute bits of background are laboriously leaded in. The main point is—and it is one the early glaziers very carefully observed—that the glass through which the light is allowed to come should not be made dirty with paint. It was mentioned before ([page 35]) how, from the first, a background would be painted solid and a diaper picked out of it. Further examples of that are shown [overleaf] and on [pages 88] and [103], though, as will be seen, a considerable portion of the glass is by this means obscured, the effect is still brilliant; and in proportion as lighter and brighter tints of glass came into use, it became more and more necessary; in fact, it never died out. The diaper [opposite] belongs to the fifteenth century, and the minuter of the three diapers [above], as well as those on [pages 88] and [103], belong to the sixteenth century.

32. Diapers scratched out.

Now that the reader may be presumed to have a perfectly clear idea of the process of the early glazier, and to realise the distinctly mosaic character of old glass, it is time mention should be made of two important intermediate methods of glass staining which presently began to affect the character of stained glass windows.

Allusion has been made ([page 2]) to the Roman practice of making glass in strata of two colours, which they carved cameo-fashion in imitation of onyx and the like; at least, one tour de force of this kind is familiar to every one in the famous Portland vase, in which the outer layer of white glass is in great part ground away, leaving the design in cameo upon dark blue. The mediæval glass-blower seems from the first to have been acquainted with this method of coating a sheet of glass with glass of a different colour. As the Roman coated his dull blue with opaque white glass, so he coated translucent white with rich pot-metal colour. It was not a very difficult operation. He had only to dip his lump of molten white into a pot of coloured glass, and, according to the quantity of coloured material adhering to it, so his bubble of glass (and consequently the sheet into which it was opened out) was spread with a thinner or thicker skin of colour. The Gothic craftsman took advantage of this facility, in so far as he had any occasion for its use. The occasion arose owing to the density of the red glass he employed, which was such that, if he had made it of the thickness of the rest of his glass, it would have been practically opaque. To have made it very much thinner would have been to make it more fragile; and in any case, it was easier to make a good job of the glazing when the glass was all pretty much of a thickness. A layer of red upon white offered a simple and practical way out of the difficulty.

33. Diaper scratched out.

What is called “ruby” glass, therefore, is not red all through, but only throughout one half or a third of its thickness. The colour is only, so to speak, the jam upon the bread; but the red and the white glass are amalgamated at such a temperature as to be all but indivisible, to all intents and purposes as thoroughly one as ordinary pot-metal glass.

For a long while glass painters used this ruby glass and a blue glass made in the same way precisely as though it had been self-coloured. But in shaping a piece of ruby glass, especially with their inadequate appliances, they would be bound sometimes to chip off at the edges little flakes of red, revealing as many little flaws of white. This would be sure to suggest, sooner or later, the deliberate grinding away of the ruby stratum in places where a spot of white was needed smaller than could conveniently be leaded in. As to the precise date at which some ingenious artist may first have used this device, it may be left to archæology to speculate. It must have been a very laborious process; and the early mediæval ideal of design was not one that offered any great temptation to resort to it during the thirteenth or even the fourteenth century. It was not, in fact, until the painting of windows was carried to a point at which there was some difficulty in so scheming the lines of the lead that they should not in any way mar its delicacy, that the practice of “flashing” glass, as it is termed, became common. That is why no mention of it has been made till now. It will be seen that it is a perfectly practical and workmanlike process, rendering possible effects not otherwise to be got in glass, but lending itself rather to minuteness of execution and elaboration of detail than to splendour of colour or breadth of effect.

34. Queen of Sheba, Fairford.

The second intermediate method of staining glass began earlier to affect the design and execution of windows; and the character of fourteenth century glass is distinctly modified by it; and, curiously enough, whilst flashing applied to red and blue glass, this applies to yellow.

It was discovered about the beginning of the fourteenth century that white glass painted with a solution of silver would take in the kiln a pure transparent stain of yellow, varying, according to its strength and the heat of the furnace, from palest lemon to deepest orange. Observe that this yellow stain is neither an enamel nor a pot-metal colour, but literally a stain, the only stain used upon glass. In pot-metal the stain (if it may be so called) is in the glass, this is upon it. But it is absolutely indelible; it can only be removed with the surface of the glass itself; time has no more effect upon it than if the glass were coated with yellow pot-metal. This silver stain was not only of a singularly pure and delicate colour, compared to which pot-metal yellows were hot and harsh, but it had all the variety of a wash of water-colour, shading off by imperceptible degrees from dark to light, and that so easily that the difficulty would have been in getting a perfectly flat tint.

Moreover, it could be as readily traced in lines or little touches of colour as it could be floated on in broad surfaces. By its aid it was as easy to render the white pearls on a bishop’s golden mitre as to give the golden hair of a white-faced angel, or to relieve a white figure against a yellow ground—and all without the use of intervening lead.

35. S. GREGORY, ALL SOULS’ COLLEGE, OXFORD.

It is not surprising that such a discovery had a very important effect upon the development of the glass painter’s practice. By means of it were produced extraordinarily beautiful effects, as of gold and silver, peculiarly characteristic of later Gothic work. The crockets and finials of white canopies would be touched with it as with gold, the hair of angels and the crowns of kings; or the nimbus itself would be stained, the head now being habitually painted on one piece of white glass with the nimbus. The crown and the pearl-edged head-band of the Queen of Sheba, from Fairford, ([page 50]), are stained upon the white glass out of which the head is cut. In the figure of S. Gregory on [page 51] the triple crown is stained yellow, and so is the nimbus of the bull, whose wings also are shaded in stain varying from light to dark.

36. Diaper in White and Stain, All Saints’ Church, York.

Of the elaborate diapering of white drapery, with patterns in rich stain, more and more resorted to as the fifteenth century advanced, a specimen is here given, in which the design is figured in white upon a yellow ground, outlined with a delicately traced line of brown. Stain was seldom used on white without such outline.

In the end white and stain predominated. Early glass was likened to jewellery; now the jewels seem to be set in gold and silver. There was a loss in dignity and grandeur, but there was a gain in gaiety and brightness. How far stain encouraged the more abundant use of white glass which prevailed in the fifteenth century it might be rash to say; at any rate, it fitted in to perfection with the tendency of the times, which was ever more and more in the direction of light, until the later Gothic windows became, in many instances, not so much coloured windows as windows of white and stain enclosing panels or pictures in colour. Even in these pictures very often not more than about one-third of the glass was in rich colour. And not only was more white glass used, but the white itself was purer and more silvery, lighter, and at the same time thinner, giving occasion and excuse for that more delicate painting which perhaps was one great reason for the change in its quality. At all events, the more transparent character of the material necessitated more painting than was desirable in the case of the hornier texture of the older make. Hence the prevalence of diaper already referred to.

By the latter half of the fifteenth century painting plays a very important part in stained glass windows. We have arrived at a period when it is no longer subsidiary to mosaic; still it has not yet begun to take precedence of it. The artist is now a painter, and he relies for much of his effect upon painting; but he is a glazier, too, and careful to make the most of what glass can do. He designs invariably with a view to the glazing of his design, and with full knowledge of what that means. He knows perfectly well what can be done in glass, and what cannot. He has not yet carried painting to the perfection to which it came eventually to be carried, but neither has he begun to rely upon it for what can best be done in mosaic. He can scarcely be said to prefer one medium to another; he uses both to equally workmanlike purpose. He does not, like the early glazier, design in lead any longer, but neither does he leave the consideration of leading till after he has designed his picture, as painters came subsequently to do.

It amounts, it might be thought, to much the same thing whether the artist begins with his lead lines and works up to his painting, as at first he did, or begins with his painting and works up to the leads, as became the practice,—so long as in either case he has always in mind the after-process, and works with a view to it. But the truth seems to be that few men have ever a thing quite so clearly in their minds as when they have it in concrete form before their eyes. The glazier may reckon upon the paint to come, but he does not rely upon it quite so much as the painter who starts with the idea of painting.

37. Nativity, Great Malvern.

The later Gothic artists gradually got into the way of thinking more and more of the painting upon their glass. In the end, they thought of it first, and there resulted from their doing so quite a different kind of design, apart from change due to modifications of architectural style; but so long as the Gothic tradition lasted—and it survived until well into the sixteenth century, in work even which bears the brand of typical Renaissance ornament—so long the glazing of a window was in no degree an after-thought, something not arranged for, which had to be done as best it might. It is apparent always to the eye at all trained in glass design that the composition even of the most pictorial subjects was very much modified, where it was not actually suggested, by considerations of glazing. As more and more white glass came to be used, it was more and more a tax upon the ingenuity of the designer so to compose his figures that his white should be conveniently broken up, and the patches of colour he wanted should be held in place by leads which in no way interfered with his white glass; for it is clear that, in proportion as the white was delicately painted, there would be brutality in crossing it haphazard by strong lines of lead not forming part of the design; and to the last one of the most interesting things in mediæval design is to observe the foresight with which the glass-worker plans his colour for the convenience of glazing.

There is very skilful engineering in the subject from Ross on [page 339]. It is not by accident that the hands of the hooded figure rest upon the shoulders of S. Edward, or that, together with his gold-brocaded surcoat and its ermine trimming, his hands, and the gilt-edged book he holds in them, they fall into a shape so easy to cut in one piece. Scarcely less artful is the arrangement of the head of the bishop with his crosier and the collar of his robe all in one. The glass painter has only to glance at such subjects as the Nativity from Great Malvern ([page 54]), or the Day of Creation from the same rich abbey church ([page 252]), or at the figure of S. Gregory from All Souls’, Oxford ([page 51]), to see how the colour is planned from the beginning, and planned with a view to the disposition of the lead lines. In the Nativity, which is reproduced from a faithful tracing of the glass, and is in the nature of a diagram, the actual map of the glazing is very clear, in spite of its disfigurement by leads which merely represent mending, and form no part of the design. There, too, may clearly be seen how the yellow radiance from the Infant Saviour is on the same piece of whitish glass on which the figure is painted. In the Creation and S. Gregory, which are taken from careful water-drawings, the effect of the glass is given, and it is perceived how little the leads obtrude themselves upon the observation in the actual windows.[A]

The Preaching of S. Bernard from S. Mary’s, Shrewsbury, [opposite], is again disfigured by accidental leads, where the glass has been repaired; but it will serve to show how, even when lead lines are as much as possible avoided, they are always allowed for, and even skilfully schemed. Many of the heads, it will be noticed, are painted upon the same pieces of white which does duty also for architectural background; or white draperies are glazed in one piece with the white-and-yellow flooring; yet the lead lines, as originally designed, seem to fall quite naturally into the outlines of the figures.

38. S. Bernard Preaching, S. Mary’s, Shrewsbury.

A very characteristic piece of glazing occurs in the foreground figure, forming a note of strong colour in the centre of the composition. The way the man’s face is included in the same piece of glass with the yellow groining of the arch, while his coloured cap connects it with his body, bespeaks a designer most expert in glazing, and intent upon it always. The danger in connection with a device of this kind, very common in work of about the beginning of the sixteenth century—as, for example, in the very fine Flemish glass at Lichfield—is that, being merely painted upon a white background, and insufficiently supported by leads, the head may seem not to belong to the strongly defined, richly draped figure. It is, of course, very much a question of making the outline strong enough to keep the leads in countenance. The artist of the Shrewsbury glass adopts another expedient at once to support the lead lines, to connect his white and colour, and to get the emphasis of dark touches just where he feels the want of them. He makes occasional use of solid black by way of local colour, as may be seen in the hood of the abbess and the shoes of the men to the right.

39. S. Mary’s, Shrewsbury.

In another subject from Shrewsbury ([here given]), in the bodice of the harpist, and the head gear of the figures on [page 104], effective use is made of these points of black. So long as they remain mere points, the end justifies the means, and there is nothing to be said against their introduction; they are entirely to the good; but such use of solid pigment is valuable mainly in subjects of quite small size, such as these are. It would be obviously objectionable if any considerable area of white glass were thus obscured.

The glass referred to at Shrewsbury, Malvern, and Oxford is of later date than much work in which painting was carried further; but there is here no question of style or period; that is reserved for future consideration ([Book II.]). The fact it is here desired to emphasise is, that there was a time when glazier and painter took something like equal part in a window, or, to speak more precisely, there were for a while windows in which the two took such equal part that each seemed to rely upon the other; when, if the artist was a painter he was a glazier too. Very likely they were two men. If so, they must have worked together on equal terms, and without rivalry, neither attempting to push his cleverness to the front, each regardful of the other, both working to one end—which was not a mosaic, nor a painting, nor a picture, but a window.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] These, together with illustrations [35], [44], [54], [142], [156], [174], [191], [207], [234], are from the admirable collection of studies from old glass very kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. John R. Clayton, himself a master of design in glass.

CHAPTER VI.
GLASS PAINTING (MEDIÆVAL).

The end of the fifteenth century brings us to the point at which painting and glazing are most evenly matched, and, in so far, to the perfection of stained-and-painted glass, but not yet to the perfection of glass painting. That was reserved for the sixteenth century, when art was under the influence of the Renaissance. Glass painting followed always the current of more modern thought, and drifted picturewards. Even in the fourteenth century it was seen that there was a fashion of naturalism in design, in the fifteenth there was an ever-increasing endeavour to realise natural form, and not natural form alone; for, in order to make the figure stand out in its niche, it became necessary to show the vault in perspective. It was obviously easier to get something like pictorial relief by means of painting than in mosaic, which accordingly fell by degrees into subordination, and the reign of the glass painter began. It must be admitted that at the beginning of the sixteenth century there was still room for improvement in painting, and that to the realisation of the then pictorial ideal stronger painting was actually necessary.

Perhaps the ideal was to blame; but even in Gothic glass, still severely architecturesque in design, more painting became, as before said, necessary, as greater use was made of white, and that painting stronger, in proportion as the material used became thinner and clearer. But though the aim of the glass painter was pictorial, the pictorial ideal was not so easily to be attained in glass; and so, though the painter reigned supreme, his dominion was not absolute. The glazier was in the background, it is true, but he was always there, and his influence is very strongly felt. The pictures of the glass painter are, consequently, still pictures in glass, for the painter was still dependent upon pot-metal for the greater part of his colour; and he knew it, and was wise enough to accept the situation, and, if he did not actually paint his own glass, to design only what could, at all events, be translated into glass. He not only continued to use pot-metal for his colour, but he made every possible use of it to his end, finding in it resources which his predecessors had not developed. His range of colours was extended almost indefinitely, and he used his glass with more discretion. He took every advantage of the accidental variety in the glass itself. No sheet of pot-metal was equal in tint from end to end; it deepened towards the selvedge, and was often much darker at one end than the other. It ranged perhaps from ruby to pale pink, from sea-green to smoky-black.

This gradation of tint wisely used was of great service in giving something like shadow without the aid of paint, and it was used with great effect—in the dragons, for example, which the mediæval artist delighted to depict—as a means of rendering the lighter tones of the creature’s belly. Supposing the beast were red, the glass painter would perhaps assist the natural inequality of the glass by abrading the ruby, by which means he could almost model the form in red. If it were a blue dragon he might adopt the same plan; or, if it were green, by staining his blue glass at the same time yellow, he could get every variety of shade from yellow to blue-green.

Every casual variety of colour would be employed to equal purpose. Even the glass-blower’s flukes came in most usefully, not merely, as before, to break the colour of a background accidentally, but as local colour. Sheets of glass, for example, which came out, instead of blue or ruby, of some indescribable tint, streaked and flecked with brighter and darker colour, until they were like nothing so much as marble, were introduced with magnificent effect into the pillars of the architecture which now formed so prominent a feature in window design. The beauty and fitness of this marble colour is eventually such as to suggest that the glass-blower must in the end deliberately have fired at this kind of fluke.

Beautiful as were the effects of white and stain produced in the middle of the fourteenth century, it was put now to fuller and more gorgeous use. Draperies were diapered in the most elaborate fashion; a bishop’s cope would be as rich as the gold brocade it imitated; patterns were designed in two or even three shades of stain, which, in combination with white and judicious touches of opaque-brown, were really magnificent. Occasionally, as at Montmorency—but this is rarer—the painter did not merely introduce his varied stain in two or three separate shades, nor yet float it on so as to get accidental variety, but he actually painted in it, modelling his armour in it, until it had very much the effect of embossed gold.

In some ornamental arabesque, which does duty for canopy work at Conches, in Normandy, this painting in stain is carried still further, the high lights being scraped out so as to give glittering points of white among the yellow. The result of this is not always very successful; but where it is skilfully and delicately done nothing could be more brilliantly golden in effect. It is curious that this silver came to be used in glass just as goldleaf was used in other decorative painting; in fact, its appearance is more accurately described as golden than as yellow, just as the white glass of the sixteenth century has a quality which inevitably suggests silver.

It was stated just now that blue glass could be stained green. It is not every kind of glass which takes kindly to the yellow stain. A glass with much soda in its composition, for example, seems to resist the action of the silver; but such resistance is entirely a question of its chemical ingredients, and has only to do with its colour in so far as that may depend upon them.

Apart from glass of such antipathetic constitution, it is quite as easy to stain upon coloured glass as upon white; and, if the coloured glass be not too dark in colour to be affected by it, precisely the same effect is produced as by a glaze or wash of yellow in oil or water-colour.

Thus we get blue draperies diapered with green, blue-green diapered with yellow-green, and purple with olive, in addition to quite a new development of landscape treatment. A subject was no longer represented on a background of ruby or dense blue, but against a pale grey-blue glass, which stood for sky, and upon it was often a delicately painted landscape, the trees and distant hills stained to green. Stain was no less useful in the foreground. By the use of blue glass stained, instead of pot-metal green, it was easy to sprinkle the green grass with blue flowers, all without lead.

It was by the combination of stain with abrasion that the most elaborately varied effects were produced. The painter could now not only stain his blue glass green (and just so much of it as he wanted green), but he could abrade the blue, so as to get both yellow, where the glass was stained, and white where it was not. Thus on the same piece of glass he could depict among the grass white daisies and yellow buttercups and bluebells blue as nature, he could give even the yellow eye of the daisy and its green calyx; and, by judicious modification of his stain, he could make the leaves of the flowers a different shade of green from the grass about them. The drawing of the flowers and leaves and blades of grass, it need hardly be said, he would get in the usual way, tracing the outline with brown, slightly shading with half tint, and painting out only just enough of the ground to give value to his detail.

In spite of the tediousness of the process, abrasion was now largely used—not only for the purpose of getting here and there a spot of white, as in the eyes of some fiery devil in the representation of the Last Judgment, but extensively in the form of diaper work, oftenest in the forms of dots and spots (the spotted petticoat of the woman taken in adultery in one of the windows at Arezzo seems happily chosen to show that she is a woman of the people), but also very frequently in the form of scroll or arabesque, stained to look like a gold tissue, or even to represent a garment stiff with embroidery and pearls. Often the pattern is in gold-and-white upon ruby or deep golden-brown, or in white-and-gold and green upon blue, and so on. In heraldry it is no uncommon thing to see the ground abraded and the charge left in ruby upon white. Sometimes a small head would be painted upon ruby glass, all of the colour being abraded except just one jewel in a man’s cap.

Stain and abrasion, by means of which either of the three primaries can be got upon white, afford, it will be seen, a workmanlike way of avoiding leadwork. But there are other ways. There is a window at Montmorency in which the stigmata in the hands and foot of S. Francis are represented by spots of ruby glass inlaid or let into the white flesh, with only a ring of lead to hold them in place. It would never have occurred to a fourteenth century glazier to do that. He would have felt bound to connect that ring of lead with the nearest glazing lines, at whatever risk of marring his flesh painting; but then, his painting would not have been so delicate, and would not in any case have suffered so much.

Indeed, the more delicate painting implies a certain avoidance of lead lines crossing it, and hence some very difficult feats of glazing. This kind of inlaying was never very largely used, but on occasion not only a spot but even a ring of glass round it would be let in in this way. There is a window at Bourges in which the glories of the saints are inlaid with jewels of red, blue, green, and violet, which have more the effect of jewellery than if they had been glazed in the usual way. Whether it was worth the pains is another question.

A more usual, and less excusable, way of getting jewels of colour upon white glass was actually to anneal them to it. By abrading the ground it was possible to represent rubies or sapphires, surrounded by pearls, in a setting of gold, but not both rubies and sapphires. In order to get this combination they would cut out little jewels of red and blue, fix them temporarily in their place, and fire the glass until these smaller (and thinner) pieces melted on to and almost into it; the fusion, however, was seldom complete. At this date some of the jewels—as, for example, at S. Michael’s, Spurrier Gate, York—are usually missing—but for which accident one would have been puzzled to know for certain how this effect was produced. The insecurity of this process of annealing is inevitable. Glass is in a perpetual state of contraction and expansion, according to the variation of our changeable climate. The white glass and the coloured cannot be relied upon to contract and expand in equal degree; they are seldom, in fact, truly married. The wedding ring of lead was safer. Sooner or later incompatibility of temper asserts itself, and in the course of time they fidget themselves asunder.

All these contrivances to get rid of leads are evidence that the painter is coming more and more to the front in glass, and that the glazier is retiring more and more into the background. The avoidance of glazing follows, as was said, upon ultra-delicacy of painting, and dependence upon paint follows from the doing away with leads. We have thus not two new systems of work, but two manifestations of one idea—pictorial glass. The pictorial ideal inspired some of the finest glass painting—the windows of William of Marseilles, at Arezzo, to mention only one instance among many. With the early Renaissance glass we arrive at masterly drawing, perfection of painting, and pictorial design, which is yet not incompatible with glass. One may prefer to it, personally, a more downright kind of work; but to deny such work its place, and a very high place, in art is to write oneself down a bigot at the least, if not an ass.

It is not until the painter took to depending upon paint for strength as well as delicacy of effect, trusting to it for the relief of his design, that it is quite safe to say he was on the wrong tack.

Towards the sixteenth century much more pronounced effects of modelling are aimed at, and reached, by the painter. Even in distinctly Gothic work the flesh is strongly painted, but not heavily. In flesh painting, at all events, the necessity of keeping the tone of the glass comparatively light was a safeguard, as yet, against overpainting.

40. GUILLAUME DE MONTMORENCY, MONTMORENCY.

The actual method of workmanship became less and less like ordinary oil or water-colour painting. It developed into a process of rubbing out rather than of laying on pigment. It was told how the glass painter in place of smear shadow began to use a stippled tint. The later glass painters made most characteristic use of “matt,” as it was called. Having traced the outlines of a face, and fixed it in the fire, they would cover the glass with a uniform matt tint; and, when it was dry, with a stiff hoghair brush scrub out the lights. The high lights they would entirely wipe out, the half tints they would brush partly away, and so get their modelling, always by a process of eliminating shadow. The conscientious painter who meant to make sure his delicate tints would stand would submit this to a rather fierce fire, out of which would come, perhaps, only the ghost of the face. This he would strengthen by another matt brushed out in the same way as before, and fire it again. Possibly it would require a third painting and a third fire; that would depend upon the combined strength and delicacy at which he was aiming, and upon the method of the man. For, though one may indicate the technique in vogue at a given time, no one will suppose that painters at any time worked all in the same way. Some men no doubt could get more out of a single painting than others out of two; some were daring in their method, some timid; some made more use than others of the stick for scraping out lines of light; some depended more upon crisp touches with the sable “tracer,” necessary, in any case, for the more delicate pencilling of the features; some would venture upon the ticklish operation of passing a thin wash of colour over matt or stippling before it was fired, at the risk of undoing all they had done—and so on, each man according to his skill and according to his temperament. But with whatever aid of scratching out lights, or touching in darks, or floating on tints, the practice in the sixteenth century was mainly, by a process of scrubbing lights out of matted or washed tints of brown, to get very considerable modelling, especially in flesh painting and in white draperies.

It is impossible in illustrations of the size here given to exemplify in any adequate manner the technique of the Early Renaissance glass painters, but it is clear that the man who painted the small subject from the life of S. Bonnet, in the church dedicated to that saint at Bourges, ([page 210]) was a painter of marked power. A still finer example of painting is to be found in the head of William de Montmorency ([opposite]) from the church of S. Martin at Montmorency near Paris, really a masterpiece of portraiture, full of character, and strikingly distinguished in treatment. There is at the Louvre a painting of the same head which might well be the original of the glass. If the glass painter painted the picture he was worthy to rank with the best painters of his day. If the glass painter only copied it, he was not far short of that, for his skill is quite remarkable; and the simple means by which he has rendered such details as the chain armour and the collar, and the Order of S. Michael, supplementing the most delicate painting with touches of opaque colour, which in less skilful hands would have been brutal, show the master artist in glass painting.

Here, towards the end of the first quarter of the sixteenth century, we have glass painting carried about as far as it can go, and yet not straying beyond the limits of what can best be done in glass. The apologists for the Renaissance would attribute all such work as this to the new revival. That would be as far wide of the mark as to claim for it that it was Gothic. The truth is, there is no marked dividing line between Gothic and Renaissance. It is only by the character of some perhaps quite slight monumental or architectural detail that we can safely classify a window of the early sixteenth century as belonging to one or the other style. It belongs, in fact, to neither. It is work of the transition period between the two. Gothic traditions lingered in the glass painter’s shop almost as long as good work continued to be done there; so much so, that we may almost say that with those Gothic traditions died the art itself. For all that, it is not to be disputed that the most brilliant achievements in glass painting were certainly in the new style and inspired by the new enthusiasm for art.

CHAPTER VII.
GLASS PAINTING (RENAISSANCE).

The quality par excellence of Renaissance glass was its painting; its dependence upon paint was its defect. Until about the middle of the sixteenth century the painter goes on perfecting himself in his special direction, neglecting, to some extent, considerations of construction on the one hand, and of colour upon the other, which cannot with impunity be ignored in glass, but achieving pictorially such conspicuous success that there may be question, among all but ardent admirers of glass that is essentially glass-like, as to whether the loss, alike in depth and in translucency of colour, as well as of constructional fitness, may not be fully compensated for by the gain in fulness of pictorial expression. According as we value most the qualities of glass in glass, or the qualities of a picture in no matter what material, will our verdict be. But there comes a point when the painter so far oversteps the limit of consistency, so clearly attempts to do in glass what cannot be done in it, so plainly sacrifices to qualities which he cannot get the qualities which stained glass offers him, that he ceases to be any longer working in glass, and is only attempting upon glass what had very much better have been done in some other and more congenial medium.

The event goes to prove the seductiveness of the pictorial idea, and illustrates once more the danger of calling to your assistance a rival craft, which, by-and-by, may oust you from your own workshop. The consideration of the possibilities in the way of pictorial glass is reserved for a chapter by itself. It concerns us for the moment only in so far as the pictorial intention affected, as it very seriously did, the technique of glass painting.

In pursuit of the pictorial the painter strayed from his allegiance to glass. He learnt to depend upon his manipulation instead of upon his material; and that facility of his in painting led him astray. He not only began to use paint where before he would, as a matter of course, have glazed-in coloured glass, but to lay it on so heavily as seriously to detract from that translucency which is the glory of glass.

It is rash to say, at a glance, whether glass has been too heavily painted or not. I once made a careful note, in writing, that certain windows in the church of S. Alpin, at Châlons, were over-painted. After a lapse of two or three years I made another equally careful note to the effect that they were thin, and wanted stronger painting. It was not until, determined to solve the mystery of these contradictory memoranda, I went a third time to Châlons, that I discovered, that with the light shining full upon them the windows were thin, that by a dull light they were heavy, and that by a certain just sufficiently subdued light they were all that could be desired. There is indiscretion, at least, in painting in such a key that only one particular light does justice to your work; but the artist in glass is always very much at the mercy of chance in this respect. He cannot choose the light in which his work shall be seen, and the painter of Châlons may have been more unfortunate than in any way to blame. There comes, however, a degree of heaviness in painted glass about which there can be no discussion. When the paint is laid on so thick that under ordinary conditions of light the glass is obscure, or when it is so heavy that the light necessary to illuminate it is more than is good for the rest of the window, the bounds of moderation have surely been passed. And in the latter half of the sixteenth century it was less and less the custom to take heed of considerations other than pictorial; so that by degrees the translucency of glass was sacrificed habitually to strength of effect depending not so much upon colour, which is the strength of glass, as upon the relief obtained by shadow—just the one quality not to be obtained in glass painting. For the quality of shadow depends upon its transparency; and shadow painted upon glass, through which the light is to come, must needs be obscure, must lack, in proportion as it is dark, the mysterious quality of light in darkness, which is the charm of shadow. The misuse of shading which eventually prevailed may best be explained by reference to its beginnings, already in the first half of the century, when most consummate work was yet being done. For example, in the masterpieces of Bernard van Orley, at S. Gudule, Brussels—one of which is illustrated [overleaf]; it is a mere diagram, giving no idea of the splendour of the glass, but it is enough to serve our purpose.

The execution of the window is, in its kind, equal to the breadth and dignity of the design. The painter has done, if not quite all that he proposed to do, all that was possible in paint upon glass. Any fault to find in him, then, must be with what he meant to do, not what he did. To speak justly, there is no fault to find with any one, but only with the condition of things. We have here, associated with the glass painter, a more famous artist, the greatest of his time in Flanders, pupil of Michael Angelo, court painter, and otherwise distinguished. It was not to be expected that he should be learned in all the wisdom of the glass painter, nor yet, human nature being what it is, that he should submit himself, lowly and reverently, to the man better acquainted with the capacities of glass. All that the glass painter could do was to translate the design of the master into glass as best he might, not perhaps as best he could have done had there been no great master to consult in the matter.

This was not the first time, by any means, that the designer and painter of a window were two men. There is no saying how soon that much subdivision of labour entered the glass worker’s shop; but so long as they were both practical men, versed each in his art, and, to some extent, each in the technique of the other, it did not so much matter. When the painter from outside was called in to design, it mattered everything. What could he be expected to care for technique other than his own? What did he know about it? He was only an amateur so far as glass was concerned; and his influence made against workmanlikeness. He may have done marvels; he did marvels; but his very mastery made things worse. He bore himself so superbly that it was not seen what dangerous ground he trod on. Lesser men must needs all stumble along in his footsteps, until they fell; and in their fall they dragged their art with them.

41. Mosaic Glass, Arezzo.

The fault inherent in such work as the Brussels windows is neither Van Orley’s nor the glass painter’s; it is in the mistaken aim of the designer striving less for colour in his windows than for relief. He succeeds in getting quite extraordinary relief, but at the expense of colour, which in glass is the most important thing. The figures in the window illustrated are so strongly painted that even the white portions of their drapery stand out in dark relief against the pale grey sky. That is not done, you may be sure, without considerable sacrifice of the light-giving quality of the glass. It is at a similar cost that the white-and-gold architecture stands out in almost the solidity of actual stone against the plain white diamond panes above, giving very much the false impression that it is placed in the window, and that you see through its arches and behind it into space. Another very striking thing in the composition is the telling mass of shadow on the soffit of the central arch. It produces its effect, and a very strong one. The festoons of yellow arabesque hanging in front of it tell out against it like beaten gold, and the rather poorish grey-blue background to the figures beneath it has by comparison an almost atmospheric quality. It is all very skilfully planned as light and dark; but there is absolutely no reason why that shadow should have been produced by heavy paint. Under certain conditions of light there are, it is true, gleams of light amidst this shadow. You can make out that the roof is coffered, and can perceive just a glow of warm colour; but most days and most of the day it is dead, dull, lifeless, colourless. The points to note are: (1) that this painted shadow must of necessity be dull; and (2) that on work of this scale at all events (the figures here are very much over lifesize), this abandonment of the mosaic method was not in the slightest degree called for. On the contrary, the simpler, easier, and more workmanlike thing to do would have been to glaze-in the shadow with deep rich pot-metal glass. That was done in earlier glass, and in glass of about the same period as this.

42. RENAISSANCE WINDOW, S. GUDULE, BRUSSELS.

For example, at Liège, where there are beautiful windows of about the same period, very similar in design, the glass is altogether lighter and more brilliant, partly owing to the use of paint with a much lighter hand, but yet more to greater reliance upon pot-metal. In the Church of S. Jacques, as at S. Gudule, there are arched canopies with festoons in bright relief against a background of shadowed soffit; but there the shadow is obtained by glazing-in pot-metal, which has all the necessary depth, and is yet luminous and full of colour.

So also the deeply shadowed architectural background to the representation of the Daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod, in the Church of S. Vincent, at Rouen ([overleaf]), is leaded up in deep purple glass, through which you get peeps of distant atmospheric blue beyond. And this was quite a common practice among French glass painters of the early half of the sixteenth century—as at Auch, at Ecouen, at Beauvais, at Conches, where the architecture in shadow is leaded in shades of purple or purplish glass, which leave little for the painter to do upon the pot-metal. At Freiburg, in Germany, there is a window designed on lines very similar indeed to Van Orley’s work, in which the shadowed parts are glazed in shades of deep blue and purple. In Italy it was the custom, already in the fifteenth century, to lead-in deep shadows in pot-metal; and they did not readily depart from it. Surely that is the way to get strong effects, and not by paint. You may take it as a test of workmanlike treatment, that the darks have been glazed-in, where it was possible, and not merely painted upon the glass.

There is some misconception about what is called Renaissance glass. Glass painting was not native to Italy, and was never thoroughly acclimatised there, any more than Gothic architecture, to which it was—the handmaid I was going to say, but better say the standard-bearer. Much glass was accordingly executed in Italy in defiance, not only of all tradition, but of all consistency and self-restraint. But even in Italy you will find sixteenth century glass as workmanlike as can be. The details from Arezzo and Bologna, [above], [overleaf], and on [page 266], are pronouncedly Renaissance in type, but the method employed by the glass painter is as thoroughly mosaic as though he had worked in the thirteenth century. Not less glazier-like in treatment are the French Renaissance details from Rouen, on [pages 75] and [347], from which it may be seen that a workmanlike treatment of glass was not confined to Gothic glaziers. It was less a question of style, in the historic sense, than of the men’s acquaintance with the traditions of good work, and their readiness to accept the situation.

43. Mosaic Glass, Arezzo.

Possibly the Netherlandish love of light and shade—and especially of shade—may account for the character of the Brussels glass. Against that it should be said that, elsewhere in Flanders, splendid glass was being done about the same time, less open to the charge of being too heavily painted—at Liège, for example. But everywhere, and perhaps more than anywhere in the Netherlands, which became presently a great centre of glass painting, the tendency, towards the latter part of the century, was in the direction of undue reliance upon paint; of which came inevitably one of two things—either the shaded parts were heavy, dirty, and opaque, or they were weak and washy in effect. If, by means of painting, an artist can get (as he can) something worth getting not otherwise to be got, though we may differ as to the relative value of what he gains and what he sacrifices, it would be hard to deny him his preference, and his right to follow it; but if by painting on glass he attempts to get what could better be expressed by working in it, then clearly he has strayed (as Van Orley did) from the straight path, as glass-workers read the map.

44. SALOME, S. VINCENT, ROUEN.

It is rather a curious thing that the avoidance of leading, the dependence upon glazing and paint, should manifest itself especially in windows designed on such a scale that it would have been quite easy to get all that was got in paint, and more, by the introduction of coloured glass; in windows, for example, on the scale of those at King’s College, Cambridge, with figures much over lifesize, where the artist, you can see, has been afraid of leading, and has shirked it. Evidently he did not realise for how little the leads would count in the glass. He does not in that case fall into the error of painting with too heavy a hand, but he trusts too much to paint—a trust so little founded that the paint has oftentimes perished, much to the disfigurement of his picture.

45. Renaissance Mosaic Glass.

The French glass painters of about the same period, though working upon a smaller scale, did not depart in the same way from the use of glazing; and where they did resort to painting, it was often with a view to a refinement of detail not otherwise to be obtained, as in the case of the delicate landscape backgrounds painted upon pale blue, which have a beauty all their own.

There is here no intention whatever of disparaging such work as that at S. Gudule. Any one capable of appreciating what is strongest and most delicate in glass must have had such keen delight in them that there is something almost like ingratitude in saying anything of them but what is in their praise. But the truth remains. Here is a branching off from old use; here the painter begins to wander from the path, and to lead after him generations of glass painters to come. It takes, perhaps, genius to lead men hopelessly astray!

CHAPTER VIII.
ENAMEL PAINTING.

The excessive use of opaque paint was not so much a new departure as the exaggeration of a tendency which had grown with the growth of glass painting itself. The really new thing in glass painting about this time was the introduction of enamel.

When glass painters were resorting, not only to opaque painting, but to abrasion, annealing, or whatever would relieve them from the difficulty of getting in mosaic glass the pictorial effect which was more and more their ruling thought, when glazing had become to them a difficulty (to the early glass-workers it was a resource), it was inevitable that they should think about painting on glass in colour. Accordingly towards the middle of the sixteenth century they began to use enamel. This was the decisive turning-point of the art.

In theory the process of painting in enamel is simple enough. You have only to grind coloured glass to impalpable dust, mix it with “fat oil,” or gum-and-water, and paint with it upon white or tinted glass; in the furnace the medium will be fired away, and the particles of coloured glass will melt and adhere, more or less firmly, to the heated sheet of glass to which they have been applied. This theory glass painters began to put into practice. In the beginning they used enamel only tentatively, first of all in the flesh tints. It had been the custom since the fourteenth century to paint flesh always upon white or whitish glass in the ordinary brown pigment; and something of the simple dignity and monumental character of old glass is due, no doubt, to that and similar removedness from nature. Gradually the fashion was introduced of painting the flesh in red instead of brown. In one sense this was no such very new thing to do. The ordinary brown pigment spoken of all along is itself enamel, although it has been thought better not to speak of it by that name for fear of confusion. Inasmuch, however, as this was the use of a pigment to get not merely flesh painting but flesh tint—that is to say, colour—it was a step in quite a new direction. Pictorially it offered considerable advantages to the painter. He could not only get, without lead, contrast of colour between a head and the white ground upon which it was painted, or the white drapery about it, but he could very readily give the effect of white hair or beard in contrast to ruddy flesh, and so on. There is a fragment at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at Paris, attributed to Jean Cousin, 1531, in which a turbaned head appears to have been cut out of a piece of purplish-blue glass, the flesh abraded, and then painted in red, the lips still redder, whilst the beard is painted on the blue, which shades off into the cheeks in the most realistic manner. Very clever things were done in this way, always in the realistic direction; but down to the middle of the century, and even later, there were always some painters who remained faithful to the traditional cool brown colour. A rather happy mean between warm and cold flesh is found at Auch (1513), where warmish enamel upon grey-blue or greenish glass gives modelling and variety of colour in the flesh, which is yet never hot. Well-chosen pieces of glass are made use of, in which the darker half comes in happily for the bearded part of a man’s face. So, also, the head of the Virgin at the foot of the cross is painted upon grey, which tells as such in her coif, shaded with a cooler brown, but only deepens and saddens her face, and intensifies the contrast with the Magdalen. Occasionally one of these heads comes out too blue, but at the worst it is better than the hot, foxy flesh painting which became the rule.

Painting in colour upon glass could naturally not stop at flesh red. It was used for pale blue skies, at first only to get a more delicate gradation from pale pot-metal colour to white, but eventually for the sky throughout the picture. In connection with yellow stain it gave a green for distant landscape.

Enamel was used in ornament to give the colour of fruits and flowers in garlands and the like, and generally for elaboration of detail, which, if not trivial, was of small account in serious decoration. For a while there were glass painters who remained proof against its seduction. It was not till the latter half of the sixteenth century that glass painters generally began seriously to substitute enamel for pot-metal, and to rely upon paint, translucent as well as opaque. Even then they could not do without pot-metal, avoid it as they might. The really strong men, such as the Crabeth Brothers, at Gouda, by no means abandoned the old method, but they relied so much upon paint as to greatly obscure the glory of their glass. The Gouda windows, which bring us to the seventeenth century, contain among them the most daring things in glass extant. They prove that a subject can be rendered more pictorially than one would have conceived to be possible in glass, but they show also what cannot be done in it; in fact, they may be said to indicate, as nearly as can be, the limits of the practicable. What artists of this calibre could not do we may safely pronounce to be beyond the scope of glass painting, even with the aid of enamel.

46. The Baptism, Gouda.

No skill of painting could make otherwise than dull the masses of heavily painted white glass employed to represent the deep shade of the receding architecture in the upper part of the window on [page 242]; so, the mass of masonry which serves in the lower half of the window on this page as a background to the Donor and his patron saint and some shields of arms, represented as it is by a thick scum of brown paint, could not but lack lustre. Think of the extent of all that uninteresting paint; what a sacrifice it means of colour and translucency!

Enamel painting did not lead to much. The colours obtained by that means had neither the purity nor the richness and volume of pot-metal. They had to be strengthened with brown, which still further dulled them; and, the taste for light and shade predominating as it did in the seventeenth century, the glass painter was eventually lured to the destruction of all glass-like quality in his glass.

There are some windows in the cathedral at Brussels, in the chapel opposite that of the Holy Sacrament, where are Van Orley’s windows, which bear witness to the terrible decline that had taken place during something like a century—not that they are badly executed in their way. The texture of silk, for example, is given by the glass painter perfectly; but, in the struggle for picturesque effects of light and shade, all consistency of treatment is abandoned. The painter is here let loose; and he can no more withstand the attractions of paint than a boy can resist the temptation of fresh fallen snow. The one must throw snowballs at somebody, the other must lay about him with pigment. Here he lays about him with it recklessly. He is reckless, that is, of the obscurity of the glass he covers with it. At moments, when the sun shines fiercely upon it, you dimly see what he was aiming at; nine-tenths of the time all is blackness. Slabs of white glass are coated literally by the yard with dense brown pigment through which the light rarely shines.

It had become the practice now to glaze a window mainly in rectangular panes of considerable size. Where pot-metal colour was used at all, it had of necessity to be surrounded with a leaden line; but within the area of the coloured mass the leading was usually in these upright and horizontal lines, and not at all according to the folds of the drapery or what not. If the glazier went out of his way to take a lead line round a face, instead of across it, that was as much as he would do; if it was merely the face of a cherub, however delicately painted, he would, perhaps, as at S. Jacques, Antwerp, cut brutally across it; and even where structural lead lines compelled him to use separate pieces of material, he by no means always took advantage of the opportunity of getting colour in his glass, but, as at Antwerp, contentedly accepted his rectangular panes of white, as something to paint on—to the exclusion of no matter how much light. It simplified matters, no doubt, for the painter thus to throw away opportunities, and just depend upon his brush; but it resulted at the best only in an imitation of oil painting, lacking the qualities of oil paint.

47. S. Martin ès Vignes, Troyes.

The French glass painters were less reckless. At Troyes, indeed, there is plenty of seventeenth century glass in which a workman can still find considerable interest. That of Linard Gontier, in particular, has deservedly a great reputation. He was a painter who could get with a wash of colour, and seemingly with ease, effects which most glass painters could only get at by stippling, hatching, and picking out; and he managed his enamel very cleverly, floating it on with great dexterity. But it is rarely that he gets what artists would call colour out of it. Even in the hands of a man of his prodigious skill the method proclaims its inherent weakness. The work is thinner, duller, altogether poorer, than the earlier glass of much less consummate workmen, who worked upon sounder and severer principles. The strength and the weakness of the painter are exemplified in the group of Donors [above]. The painting is admirable, not only in the heads, but in the texture of the men’s cloaks; those cloaks, however, are painted in black paint. When the light is quite favourable they look like velvet; they never look like glass.

There is here the excuse, for what it may be worth, of texture and perhaps other pictorial qualities. Even that is often wanting in seventeenth century work, as when, at S. Jacques, Antwerp, the background to a design in white and stain is glazed in panes of white glass solidly coated with brown paint. This is obscuration out of pure wilfulness.

It was not only when the artist sought to get strong effects in enamel painting that the method fell short of success. The delicacy that might be got by means of it was neutralised by the necessity of some sort of glazing, and matters were not mended by glazing the windows in panes. It is impossible to take much satisfaction in the most delicately painted glass picture when it is so scored over with coarse black lines of lead or iron that it is as if you were looking at it through a grill. That is very much the effect seen in Sir Joshua Reynolds’ famous window in the ante-chapel at New College, Oxford (two lights of which are shown [opposite]), where the Virtues are seen imprisoned, you may say, within iron bars. They look very much better there than in the glass, which, for all the graceful draughtsmanship of the artist and the delicate workmanship of the painter, is ineffective to the last degree. It has no more brilliancy or sparkle than a huge engraving seen against the light; square feet of white glass are muddied over with paint.

It was not Sir Joshua’s fault, of course, that the traditions of the glazier’s craft were in his day well-nigh extinct; but Sir Horace Walpole was quite right when he described these vaunted Virtues as “washy.” To say that they are infinitely more pleasing in the artist’s designs is the strongest condemnation of the glass.

48. VIRTUES, BY SIR J. REYNOLDS, NEW COLL., OXFORD.

There was one use made of enamel which promised to be of real help to the glazier—that of painting the necessary shadows on pot-metal in shades of the same colour as the glass. Since enamel of some kind had to be used, why not employ a colour more akin to the glass itself than mere brown? It would seem as if by so doing one might get depth of colour with less danger of heaviness than by the use of brown; but the glass painted in that way (by the Van Lingen, for example, a family of Flemings established in England, whose work may be seen at Wadham and Balliol Colleges, Oxford) was by no means free from heaviness. Enamel then, it will be seen, was never really of any great use in glass painting, and it led to the degradation of the art to something very much like the painting of transparencies, as they are called, on linen blinds.

Let us note categorically the objections to it. A glazier objects to it, that it is an evasion of the difficulty of working in glass, and not a frank solution of it. That may be sentimental more or less. A colourist objects to it, because it is impossible to get in it the depth and richness of strong pot-metal, or the brilliancy of the more delicate shades of self-coloured material. That, it may be urged, remains to be proved, but the enamel painter practically undertook to prove the contrary, and failed. Admirers of consistency object to it, that it succeeds so ill in reconciling the delicacy of painting aimed at with the brutality of the glazing employed. That, again, is a question of artistic appreciation, not so easily proved to those who do not feel the discord. Lovers of good work, of work that will stand, object to it that it is not lasting. This is a point that can be easily proved.

The process of enamel painting has been explained above ([page 77]). The one thing necessary to the safe performance of the operation is that the various glass pigments shall be of such consistency as to melt at a lower temperature than the glass on which they are painted. That, of course, must keep its shape in the kiln, or all would be spoilt. The melting of the pigment is, as a matter of fact, made easier by the admixture of some substance less unyielding than glass itself—such as borax—to make it flow. This “flux,” as it is called, makes the glass with which it is mixed appreciably softer than the glass to which it is apparently quite safely fixed by the fire. It is thus more susceptible to the action of the atmosphere; it does not contract and expand equally with that; and in the course of time, perhaps no very long time, it scales off. Excepting in Swiss work (to which reference is made in [Chapter IX].) this is so commonly so, that you may usually detect the use of enamel by the specks of white among the colour, where the pigment has worked itself free, altogether to the destruction of pictorial illusion. And it is not only with transparent enamel that this happens, but also with the brown used by the later painters for shading.

The brown tracing and painting colour was originally a hard metallic colour which required intense heat to make it flow. The glass had to be made almost red-hot, at which great heat there was always a possibility that the pigment might be fired away altogether, and the painter’s labour lost. In the case of the thirteenth century painter’s work the danger was not very serious. Thanks to the downright and sometimes even brutal way in which he was accustomed to lay on the paint, solidly and without subtlety of shade, his work was pretty well able to take care of itself in the kiln. It was the more delicate painting which was most in danger of being burnt away; and in proportion as men learnt to carry their painting further, and to get delicate modelling, they became increasingly anxious to avoid all possibility of any such catastrophe. The easiest way of doing this was (as in the case of transparent enamel) to soften this colour with flux. That enabled them to fire their glass at a much lower heat, at which there was no risk of losing the painting, and they were able so to make sure of getting the soft gradations of shade they wanted; and the more the painter strove to get pictorial effects the more he was tempted to soften his pigment; but, according as the flux made the colour easier to manage in the fire, it made it less to be depended upon afterwards; and the later the work, and the more pictorial its character, the more surely the painting proves at this date to have lost its hold upon the glass. In many a seventeenth century window the Donors were depicted in their Sunday suits of black velvet and fur, the texture quite wonderfully given; now their garments are very much the worse for wear, more than threadbare. The black or brown is rich no longer, it is pitted with specks of raw white light; sometimes the colour has peeled off en masse. Time has dealt comparatively kindly with the gentlemen on [page 81], but in the glass there is an air of decay about their sable cloaks which takes considerably away from their dignity. It is one characteristic of enamelled windows that they do not mellow with age, like mosaic glass, but only get shabby.

Any one altogether unacquainted with the characteristics of style is apt to be very much at fault as to the date of a window. The later windows are in so much more dilapidated a condition than the earlier that they are quite commonly mistaken for the older.

It has to be borne in mind that most of the devices adopted by the glass painters—the use, namely, of large sheets of fragile glass, and the avoidance of strengthening leads, no less than the resort to soft enamel, whether for colour or for shading—all go to make it more perishable.

It may be said that the decay of the later painting is due not so much to the use of enamel as to the employment of soft flux. That is true. But when it comes to the painting of texture and the like, the temptation to use soft colour has generally proved to be irresistible. One is forced to the conclusion that the aim of the later glass painter was entirely wrong; that for the sake of pictorial advantages—which went for very little in a scheme of effective church decoration, even if they did not always detract from the breadth of the work—he gave up the qualities which go at once to make glass glorious, and to give it permanence. Whatever the merits of seventeenth century glass painting they are not the merits of glass; there is little about it that counts for glass, little that is suggestive of glass—except the breakages it has suffered.

What is said of seventeenth century glass applies also to that of the eighteenth century, only with more force. Sir Joshua and Benjamin West were quite helpless to raise the art out of the slough into which it had fallen, for they were themselves ignorant of its technique, and did not know what could be done in glass. It was not until the Gothic revival in our own century, and a return to mosaic principles, that stained glass awoke to new life.

CHAPTER IX.
THE NEEDLE POINT IN GLASS PAINTING.

Allusion has been made to the glass painter’s use of the point for scraping out lights, and especially diapers upon glass coated with pigment. These are often quite lace-like in their delicacy. That would be a poor compliment if it meant that the glass painter had had no more wit than to imitate the effects produced in a material absolutely unlike glass. But it is not merely for want of a better word that the term lace-like is used. It is strictly appropriate, and for a very good reason. It was explained how from the first the glass painter would use the stick end of his brush to scrape out sharp lights in his painting, or even diaper patterns out of a tint. The latest glass painters made more and more use of the point, and of a finer point than the brush end, until, in Swiss work, they adopted the pen and the needle itself. It is not surprising, then, that point-work should resemble point-work, though the one be in thread and the other on glass. The strange thing would have been if it were not so. Thus it comes about that much of the Swiss diaper work is most aptly described as lace-like in effect.

The field of a small shield is frequently diapered with a pattern so fine that it could only have been produced with a fine point. Some of the diapers [opposite] may be identified as portions of heraldic shields. On a shield it may be taken to represent the engraving of the metal surface of the thing itself; and, indeed, here again is a significant resemblance between two technical processes.

To scratch with a needle or with a graver is much the same thing; and thus many a Swiss diaper suggests damascening, and might just as well have been executed in bright lines of gold or silver filigree, beaten into lines graven in steel or iron, as scraped out of a tint on glass.

49. EXAMPLES OF SCRATCHING OUT.

But the use of the point was by no means reserved for ornamental detail. It became the main resource of the painter, and so much so, that this technique, or this development of technique, is the most striking characteristic of Swiss glass painting—if that should be called painting which has really more affinity with etching.

For the laying on of the paint in the form of solid colour, or of matted tint, or of skilfully floated wash, is only the groundwork of the Swiss glass painter’s method. It scarcely needs to be explained how admirably the point adapted itself to the representation of hair, fur, feathers, and the like. The familiar bears, for example, the device of the city of Berne, which occur very frequently in Swiss heraldic work, are rendered at Lucerne in the most marvellously skilful manner. First a juicy wash of colour is floated all over the body of the beast, more or less translucent, but judiciously varied so as to give à peu près the modelling of the creature. Then with a fine point the lines of the fur are scraped out, always with an eye to the further development of the modelling. Finally, the sharp lights are softened, where necessary, with delicate tint, and a few fine hair-lines are put in with a brush in dark brown.

By no conceivable method of execution could certain textures be better rendered than this. A similar process is adopted in rendering the damascened surface of slightly rounded shields; but in that case the modelling of the ground is first obtained by means of matt, not wash.

Black as a local colour, whether by way of heraldic tincture or to represent velvet in costume, was very generally used; but in such small quantities always as entirely to justify its use. The practice, that is to say, referred to on [page 57], with reference to the German work at Shrewsbury, was carried further. This was quite a different thing from what occurs, for example, in a late window at Montmorency, where four brown Benedictine monks are frocked in muddy paint: that is a fault of judgment no skill in execution could make good. In the case of black used by way of local colour the drawing lines were of course scraped out in clear glass, and toned, if need were, with tint. The hair, cap, and feathers of the figure [opposite] illustrate the processes of execution above described; the chain armour about the man’s neck is also very deftly suggested.

50. NEEDLE POINT WORK, SWISS.

The use of the point went further than rendering the texture of hair, and so on. It was used for the rendering of all texture and the completion of modelling everywhere. The Swiss glass painter did very much what is done in large when one draws on brown or grey paper in white and black; only instead of black chalk he used brown paint, and instead of putting on white chalk he scraped away a half tint with which he had begun by coating the glass; and of course he worked in small.

One knows by experience how much more telling the white crayon is than the black, how much more modelling you seem to get with very little drawing; and so it is in glass; and so it was that the glass painter depended so much more upon taking out lights than upon putting in darks. The difference between the Swiss manner and the process already described in reference to Renaissance church glass was mainly that, working upon so much smaller a scale, the artist depended so much more upon the point. His work is, in fact, a kind of etching. It is the exact reverse of drawing in pen and ink, where the draughtsman works line by line up to his darkest shadow. Here he works line by line to clearest light, precisely as the etcher draws his negative upon copper, only on glass it is the positive picture which is produced. So far as manipulation is concerned the two processes are identical. It is indeed quite within the bounds of possibility that the method of the glass painter (and not that of the damascener, as generally supposed) may first have put the etcher upon the track of his technique.

The method of workmanship employed by the painter is shown pretty clearly on [page 90]. In spite of a certain granular surface given by the stone employed by the lithographer in reproducing the design, it is quite clearly seen how the man’s armour and the texture of the silk in his sleeves is all obtained by the point. The trace of the needle is not clearly shown in the flesh, except in the hand upon his hip; but on [page 93] it is everywhere apparent—in the shading of the architecture, at the top of the page, in the damascening of the tops of shields below, in the drawing of the pastoral staff, in the modelling of the mitre and the representation of the jewels upon it, no less than in the rendering of the texture of the silk.

This ultra-delicacy of workmanship was naturally carried to its furthest extent upon white glass or upon white and stain, but the same method was employed with pot-metal colour; and, during the early part of the sixteenth century at least, pot-metal colour was used when it conveniently could be, and the leading was sometimes cleverly schemed, though the glass employed was often crude in colour. Eventually, in Switzerland as everywhere, enamel colour succeeded pot-metal, by which, of course, it would have been impossible correctly to render the tinctures of elaborately quartered shields on the minute scale to which they were customarily drawn. At Lucerne, for example, there are some small circular medallions with coats of arms not much bigger than occur on the back of an old-fashioned watchcase. Needless to say that there the drawing is done entirely with a point. This kind of thing is, of course, glass painting in miniature; it is not meant to say that it is effective; but it is none the less marvellously done. It was at its best, roughly speaking, from 1530 to a little later than 1600. Some of the very best that was ever done, now at the Rath-haus at Lucerne, bears date from 1606-1609; there is some also at the Hof-kirche there; but that is out of the reach of ordinary sight, and this is placed where it can conveniently be studied. The point-work, it should be understood, is still always scraped out of brown, or it may be black. The enamel that may be used with it is floated on independently of this; and as time went on enamel was of course very largely used, especially in the seventeenth century. To the credit of the Swiss it should be said that, alone among later glass painters, they were at once conscientious and expert in the chemistry of their art, and used enamel which has been proof against time. They knew their trade, and practised it devotedly. Possibly it was the small scale upon which they worked which enabled them to fuse the enamel thoroughly with the glass. It is due to them also to say that, though their style may have been finikin, there was nothing feeble about their workmanship; that was masterly. And they remain the masters of delicate manipulation and finish in glass painting.

Although the needle point was used to most effective purpose in Swiss glass it did not of course entirely supersede other methods. At the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg (where there is a fair amount of good work, 1502-1672) there is some matted tint which is shaded and then lined in brown, much after the manner of one of Dürer’s woodcuts. It has very much the appearance of a pen drawing shaded, as many of the old masters’ drawings were, in brown wash.

51. NEEDLE-POINT WORK, SWISS.

A fair amount of simple figure work in white and stain continued to be done, in which outline went for a good deal, and matted shadow was only here and there helped out with the point. In landscape backgrounds shade tint was sometimes broadly and directly floated on. But as often as not shading was executed to a great extent with the needle, whilst local colour was painted with enamel. Even in association with admirable heraldry and figure work, one finds distant figure groups and landscapes painted in this way. They look more like coloured magic-lantern slides than painted window glass.

Sometimes subtlety of workmanship was carried rather beyond the bounds of discretion, as when at Nuremberg (1530) faces were painted in tint against clear glass, without outline, the mere shading, delicate as it is, being depended upon to relieve them from the ground. It must be confessed that, near to the eye, it does that; but the practice does not recommend itself.

It is remarkable how very faint a matt of colour on the surface of transparent glass gives a sort of opacity to it which distinguishes it from the clear ground. Sometimes white enamel is used, sometimes perhaps a mere coat of flux: it is difficult to say what it is, but there is often on the lightest portions of the painted glass no more than the veriest film, to show that it has been painted.

It is obvious that glass of the most delicate character described must be the work of the designer; and it seems clear, from numerous drawings extant, which are evidently the cartoons for Swiss window panes, that the draughtsman contemplated carrying out his design himself. At all events, he frequently left so much out of these drawings, that, if he trusted to the painting of another, no little of the credit of the draughtsmanship was due to that other, and he was at least part designer of the window. In glass where painting is carried to a high state of perfection it goes without saying that the painter must be an artist second only to the designer. Invention and technical power do not always go together. But if the designer can paint his own glass, and will, so much the better. It is more than probable that the best glass is the autograph work of the designer.

CHAPTER X.
THE RESOURCES OF THE GLASS PAINTER—A RECAPITULATION.

Having followed the course of technique thus far, it may be as well to survey the situation and see where we now stand. Suppose an artist altogether without experience in glass had occasion to design a window. The first thing he would want to know would be the means at his command at this present moment, and what dependence he could place upon them. That is what it is intended briefly to set forth in this chapter, quite without reference to date or style or anything but the capacities of the material. The question is, what can be done with it? Not until a man knows that is he in a position to make up his mind as to what he will do.

If he ask, as artists will, why cannot he do just what he likes, and as he likes, the answer is: because glass was not made for him, and will only do what he wants on condition of his demands upon it being reasonable. He might find it pleasanter if the world revolved round him; but it does not. If he would make a window he must go the way of glass; and the way of glass is this:—

In the first place, it is mosaic. It may be a mosaic of white glass or of the pearly tints which go to make what is termed grisaille, in which case the leads which bind the glass together form the pattern, or, at all events, a feature in it. Or it may be of coloured glass, or of white and colour, in which case the glass forms the pattern, and the lead joints are more or less lost in the outline of the design.

If the pattern is in white upon a deep-coloured ground the lead joints crossing the pattern and not forming part of it are, as it were, eaten up by the spreading rays of white light, and, supposing them to be judiciously contrived, do not count for much. On the other hand, the lead joints crossing the coloured ground are lost in its depth. Advantage is taken of this to break up the ground more than would be necessary for convenience of glazing, or of strength when glazed, and so to get that variety of pot-metal upon which so much of the beauty of glass colour depends.

52. Plain Glazing, Early French.

To give satisfactory colour the best of pot-metal glass is essential. Structural conditions which a man is bound to take into account in his design are—that the shapes he draws must be such as can readily be cut by the glazier; that his lead joints must be so schemed as, where not lost in the glass, to form part of the design, strengthening, for example, the outlines; that his plan must at intervals include provision for substantial iron bars which shall not interfere with the drawing.

He must understand that each separate colour in his composition is represented by a separate piece of glass, cut out of a sheet of the required colour. There may, and should, however, be variety in it. A sheet of glass varies in depth of tone according to its thickness, which in the best glass is never even; moreover, it may be streaked or otherwise accidentally varied; and so considerable play of tint may be got in a well-selected piece of pot-metal. Should a tint be required which the palette of the glazier does not supply it may sometimes be obtained by leading up two thicknesses of glass together. This expedient is called “plating.”

53. Mosaic Glass, Assisi.

There are two very workmanlike ways in which white and colour may be obtained in one piece of glass. If the glass is not coloured throughout its thickness, but only a part of the way through, the coloured part may be eaten away in places by acid (it used formerly to be tediously abraded); and so a pattern of white may be traced upon a ground of blue, for example, or, as is more common, ruby.

A piece of white or pale coloured glass may further be stained, but only, so far, of one colour, yellow. The window [opposite] is all in white and golden-yellow. This result is produced by the action of silver upon it, which, at a sufficient temperature, develops a tint varying from lemon to orange of beautiful quality, and as imperishable as the glass; but one cannot be quite certain always as to the precise shade it will take in the fire. On blue it gives green, and so on.

By the combination of these two processes three tints may be obtained, or even four upon the same piece of glass—say white, green, and yellow all upon a blue ground.

There is a third method of avoiding lead glazing. If little jewels of coloured glass be cut out of various sheets and placed upon white glass they become fused at a sufficient heat in the kiln, and adhere more or less firmly to the glass on which they are laid; but this process of “annealing” is not very safe. Still less to be depended upon is the fourth process of “enamelling.” In that case the coloured glass is applied in the form of a paint upon a sheet of white. Fusing at a comparatively low temperature, it rarely gets quite firmly fixed. Nor has it the depth of pot-metal colour. The three processes of staining, annealing, and enamelling, entail, it will be seen, the burning of the glass. Literally this is the limit of what can be done in stained glass.

54. WINDOW IN WHITE AND STAIN, WARWICK CASTLE.

The term stained glass, however, is generally used to include painting, which from the first has been associated with it. This painting (not to be confounded with the above mentioned enamelling) is a second process, which the glass undergoes after it is cut and before it is fired. It is not in the least what a painter understands by painting. It is, in the first place, a means of giving in solid brown pigment, which effectually stops out the light, detail smaller than mere glazing would permit, such as the features of a face or the veining of a leaf: it gives the foils of the foliage, and marks the individual berries in the border overleaf. In the next it is used partially to obscure the glass, so as to give shading. The pigment is not used as colour, but for drawing and shading only. Local colour is represented by the pieces of pot-metal glass employed; the painting fulfils precisely the part of the engraving in a print coloured by hand. The various methods of painting are explained on [pages 45], [64], [89]. In some respects they have more affinity with line drawing, mezzotint, and etching than with oil or water-colour painting.

It is extremely difficult to get delicacy of modelling or high finish at one painting—to all but a consummate glass painter impossible. Many a time the work has to be painted several times over, each painting being separately burnt in, always at some risk. Painting that is not sufficiently fired peels off in time. If it is fired too much it may be burnt quite away.

The effect of paint in the form of shading is naturally to obscure the glass. Up to a certain point there is not much harm in that; it counts for nothing as compared with the facilities of expression it affords. But that point is soon reached. Then it becomes a question of the relative value of, on the one hand, purity and translucency of glass colour, and, on the other, of pictorial qualities. The problem is to get the utmost of modelling or expression with the minimum of obscuration. Much depends upon the method of painting adopted. So long as the light is allowed to get through it, one may indulge in a fair amount of shading, but a deep even tint, leaving none of the glass clear, is inevitably heavy. The more one can represent shadows by deeper tinted glass the more brilliant the result will be.

55. Auxerre.

This painting, although, strictly speaking, in brown enamel, is not, as was said, what is usually meant by enamel painting: that is described on [page 77]. A window may be painted altogether in enamel; and, when the mosaic method went out, designs were painted in enamel upon panes of plain white glass; but, for the most part, since the pieces had to be connected by lead, it was found convenient to use pot-metal for some of the stronger colours. In recent times, however, owing to the introduction of large sheets of thicker glass, to improved glass kilns, and also to more accurate knowledge of the chemistry of enamel colours, it is possible to paint a picture-window on one sheet of glass. That has been done with extraordinary skill at Sèvres. You may see really marvellous results in this kind in the Chapel of the Bourbons at Dreux. If you want neither more nor less than a picture upon glass, and are content with a picture in which the shadows are opaque and the lights transparent, that is the way to get it. You will not get the qualities of glass. Within the last two or three years there seems to have been very considerable improvement in the purity, translucency, and depth of enamel colours. How far they are lasting remains to be proved. Anyway, brilliant as they are, they have not by any means the intensity of pot-metal glass, and it does not seem, humanly speaking, possible that a film of coloured glass upon a sheet of white can ever compete in strength and volume with colour in the body of the glass itself.

If, therefore, we want the qualities of deep, rich, luminous and translucent colour, which glass better than any other medium can give, we must resort to the use of pot-metal—that is to say, to glazing—assisted more or less by brown paint, used, not to get colour, but to stop it out, or to tone it down.

According to the more or less of your dependence upon paint your method may be described as mosaic or pictorial.

Starting upon the mosaic system, you rough out your design in coloured glass (or what stands for it upon paper), and then consider how, by use of paint, as above mentioned, you may get further detail, shading, harmony of tone.

Starting upon the pictorial system you sketch in your design, shade it, and colour it, and then bethink you how you can get the glass to take those lines.

In either case you have, of course, from the first, a very distinct idea as to the assistance you will get from the supplementary process; but it makes all the difference whether you think first of the glass or of the painting. Upon that will depend the character of your window. If you want all that glass can give in the way of colour, begin with the mosaic. If you want pictorial effect, think first of your painting. If you want to get both, balance the two considerations equally in your mind from the first. Only, to do that, you must be a master of your trade.

A first consideration in the design of a window are the bars which are to support it. The skilled designer begins by setting these out upon his paper, nearer or closer together, according to the width of the opening, from nine to eighteen inches asunder. In a wide window it may be as well to make every second or third bar extra strong. Upright stanchions may also be introduced. Exigencies of design may make it necessary to alter the arrangement of bars with which you set out. You may have occasionally to bend one of them to escape a face, or other important feature; but, if you begin with them, this will not often be necessary. Bars may be shaped to follow the lines of the design. There is nothing against that, except that it is rather costly to do; and, on the whole, it is hardly worth doing. In big windows, such as those at King’s College, Cambridge, raised some feet above the level of the eye, stout bars have, in effect, only about the value of strong lead lines, whilst lead lines disappear.

The points to be observed with regard to glazing are these: Since leads must form lines, it is as well to throw them as much as possible into outlines. In a cleverly glazed window the design will tell even when the paint has perished. To glaze a picture in squares, regardless of the drawing, is mere brutality. Because by aid of the diamond glass may actually be cut to almost any shape, it is not advisable, therefore, to design shapes awkward to cut, but rather to design the lead lines of a window with a view to simplicity of cutting and strength of glazing. Pieces of glass difficult to cut are the first to break. It is the business of the designer to anticipate breakage by introducing a lead just where it would occur. Tours de force in glazing are not worth doing. It is a mistake to be afraid of leads. Skilfully introduced, they help the effect; and, except in work which comes very near the eye, they are lost in the glass.

The quality of pot-metal glass is all important. It should never be mechanically flat and even. The mechanically imperfect material made in the Middle Ages is so infinitely superior to the perfect manufacture of our day, that we have had deliberately to aim at the accidents of colour and surface which followed naturally from the ruder appliances and less accurate science of those days. There are legends about lost secrets of glass making, to which much modern produce gives an appearance of truth. But, as a matter of fact, though old glass undoubtedly owes something of its charm to weathering, better and more beautiful glass was never made than is now produced; but it is not of the cheapest, and it wants choosing.

The choice of glass is a very serious matter. What are called “spoilt” sheets are invaluable. It takes an artist to pick the pieces. But without experience in glass the judgment even of a colourist will often be at fault. Some colours spread unduly, so that the effect of the juxtaposition of any two is not by any means the same as it would be in painting. It is only by practical experiment that a man learns, for example, how much red will, in conjunction with blue, run into purple, and which shade of either colour best holds its own. Effects of this kind have been more or less scientifically explained—by M. Viollet le Duc for one—but, in order to profit by any such explanation, a man must have experience also.

Referring to “flashed” glass, all kinds of double-glass are now made: red and blue = purple, yellow and blue = green, and so on; but there is not, except, perhaps, in work on quite a small scale, much to be gained by this. In fact, it is not well in work on a fairly large scale to depend too much upon etching pattern out of coated glass. In a window breadth of effect is of more account than minuteness of detail. Damask or other patterns in draperies might, more often than they are, be leaded up in pot-metal. It would compel simplicity on the part of the designer, and the effect of the glass would be richer.

With the increasing variety of coloured glass now made, plating becomes less necessary than once it was. The drawback to the practice is that dust and dirt may insinuate themselves between the two pieces of glass, and deaden the colour. The safe plan is to fuse the two pieces of glass together.

Good glass is more than half the battle. Raw glass may be toned down by paint, but poor glass cannot be made rich by it. The Italian glass painters often used crude greens and purples, and softened them with brown. They might do that with comparative safety under an Italian sky; but the deeper tones produced that way have not the purity and lusciousness of juicy pot-metal, and the paint is liable to peel off and betray the poverty of the cheap material. It is the fundamental mistake of the painter, because by means of paint he can do so much, to depend upon it for more than it can do. The toning of local colour with brown paint is only a makeshift for more thoroughly mosaic work; but it is an ever-present temptation to the painter, and one against which he should be on his guard.

The actual technique of glass painting, it has been explained already, is quite different from painting as the painter understands it; often it is not so much painting as scraping out paint. The artist may, nay must, choose his own technique. He will get his effect in the way most sympathetic to him. What he has to remember is, that, except where he wants actually to stop out light, he must get light into his shadows—whether by stippling the wet colour, or by scrubbing it when dry with a hog tool, or by scraping with a point, is his affair. For example, if he wants to lower the tint of a piece of glass, the worst thing he could do would be to coat it with an even film of paint. It would be better to stipple it so that in parts more light came through. But the best way of preserving the brilliancy of the glass would be either to paint the glass with cross-hatched lines, or to scrape bright lines out of a coat of paint.

56. Scratched Diaper.

In draperies, backgrounds, and so on, this is most effectively done in the form of a diaper, often as minute as damascening, which scarcely counts much as pattern. Bold or delicate, a diaper is quite the most effective means of lowering colour; even hard lines seldom appear hard in glass, owing to the spreading of the light as it comes through; but the inevitable hardness of lines scraped out may be mitigated by dabbing the wet paint so as to make it uneven, or by rubbing off part of the paint after the lines have been scraped out. Another and yet another delicate film of paint may be passed over the painted diaper by a skilful hand, but out of each film lights should be scraped if the full value of the glass is to be preserved.

Solid pigment as local colour is a thing to indulge in only with extreme moderation. The strong black lead lines often want lines or touches of black strong enough to keep them in countenance (that is not sufficiently remembered, and it is when it is forgotten that the leads assert their harshness in white glass), and here and there, in work on a small scale, a point of black (a velvet cap, a bag, a shoe, as shown [overleaf],) is very valuable as local colour; but, when the scale allows, it is better always to get this mass in dark-toned glass, which gives the necessary depth of colour most easily, most safely, and with most luminous effect.

The thing not to do, is to paint the robes of black-draped figures in black, a common practice in the seventeenth century. On the other hand, a robe of black richly embroidered with gold and pearls may quite well be rendered, as it was in late Gothic work, by solid paint, because the pearls being only delicately painted, and the gold being in great part perfectly clear yellow stain, plenty of light shines through.

As to the means of getting delicate painting in glass, the utmost delicacy can be got, but it costs patient labour, and there is risk of its going for nothing.

The only quite safe way of getting very delicate effects of painting is to paint much stronger than it is meant to appear. A very fierce fire will then reduce that to a mere ghost of what it was; possibly it will burn it away altogether. Upon this ghost of your first painting you may paint once again, strengthening it (and indeed exaggerating it) in all but quite the most delicate parts. A strong fire will, as before, reduce this without affecting the first painting. Possibly a third or even a fourth painting may be necessary to an effect of high finish. When you have it, it is as lasting as the glass itself.

57. S. Mary’s, Shrewsbury.

This painstaking process, however, is found to be tedious. A much easier plan is to add to the pigment a quantity of borax, or other substance which will make it flow easily in the kiln. That necessitates only a gentle fire, in which there is no risk of burning away the work done, and enables you to do in one or two operations what would have taken three or four. But the gentle fire required to fix soft flux only fixes it gently. Securely to fix the pigment, the glass should have been raised to almost red heat, to the point, in fact, at which it just begins to melt, and the colour actually sinks into it, and becomes one with it. A heat anything like that would have wiped out soft colour altogether. Moreover, the borax flux itself is very readily decomposed by the moisture of a climate like ours. Accordingly the more easily executed work cannot possibly be fast. It fades, they say. That is not the case. It simply crumbles off, sooner or later; but eventually the atmosphere has its way with it. That is how we see in modern windows faces in which the features grow dim and disappear.

We have got to reckon with this certainty, that if we want our painting to last we must fire it very severely. What will not stand a fierce oven will not stand the weather.

In view of the labour and risk involved in very delicate painting it becomes a question how far it is worth while. That will depend upon the artist’s purpose. But the moral seems to be that, for purposes of decoration generally, it would be better not to aim at too great delicacy of effect, which is after all not the quality most valuable, any more than it is most readily attainable, in glass.

Only those who have had actual experience in glass appreciate the value of silver stain. It gives the purest and most beautiful quality of yellow, from lemon to orange, brilliant as gold. There is some risk with it. One kind of glass will take it kindly, another will reject it; you have to choose your glass with reference to it. The fire may bring it to a deeper colour than is wanted. It may even come out so heavy and obscure that it has to be removed with acid, and renewed. Some all but inevitable uncertainty as to its tint, renders this peculiar yellow more suitable for use where absolute certainty of tint is not essential. Nevertheless, the skilled glass painter makes no difficulty of doubling the process, and staining a dark yellow upon a lighter, with very beautiful results. Occasionally a master of his craft has gone so far as literally to paint in stain, scraping out his high lights in white, and giving, for example, the very picture of embossed goldsmith’s work.

In the diapering of draperies and the like stain is of great service, and again in landscape upon blue. But it has not been used for all it is worth as a means of qualifying colour which is not precisely right, apart altogether from pattern. Many a time where a scum of paint has been employed to reduce a tint, a judicious blur of stain, not appreciable as such, would have done it more satisfactorily, without in the least obscuring the glass.

Nowhere is silver stain more invaluable than in windows of white glass or grisaille, the quality of which is not sufficiently appreciated. The mother-of-pearl-like tints of what is called white glass lend themselves, in experienced hands, to effects of opalescent colour as beautiful in their way as the deeper pot-metal tones.

There is no great difficulty in combining grisaille and colour, provided the white be not too thin nor the colour too deep; but the happiest combinations are where one or the other is distinctly predominant. With very deep rich glass, such as that used in the thirteenth century, it is most difficult to use white in anything like a patch (for the flesh, for example, in figure work). Unless very heavily painted it asserts itself too much, and heavy paint destroys its quality. Practically the only thing to do is to use glass of really rather strong tint, which in its place has very much the value of white. The “whites” in Early windows are a long way from purity. They are greenish, bone colour, horny; but they have much more the effect of white than has, for example, pure white glass reduced by paint to a granular tint of umber.

Flesh tints present a difficulty always, unless you are content to accept a quite conventional rendering of it. In connection with strong colour you may use flesh-tinted glass; but that is just the one tint which it is most difficult to get in glass. It is usually too pink. Painting on white glass in brown produces the most invariably happy results, and in windows into which white largely enters that is quite the best expedient to adopt. In practice it proves ordinarily a mistake to adopt a warmer brown for flesh tint, or to paint it in brown and red, as was done in the sixteenth century and after that. It looks always unpleasantly hot. When flesh wants relieving against white it is better to use a colder white glass for the background. The only condition under which warm-tinted flesh is quite acceptable is when it is in the midst of strong red and yellow. The use of red enamel for flesh seems to be a weak, unnecessary, and unavailing concession to the pictorial. It does not give the effect of actual flesh, and it does not help the effect of the window. Since you cannot get actual flesh tones it is as well to accept the convention of white flesh, which gives breadth and dignity to the glass. There is a sort of frivolity about enamelled flesh-pink. It is, in a way, pretty, but out of key with the monumental character of a window. Glass lends itself best to strong, large work. The quality of pot-metal gives the colour chord. The leads give the key to the scale of design—the pitch, as it were, of the artist’s voice. That these are strong (it is seldom worth while resorting to extra thin leads) does not argue that design must be coarse. You have to balance them with strong work, with patches, perhaps, as well as strong lines, of dark paint, to carry off any appearance of brutality in them. This done, much delicate detail may be introduced. A strong design need not shout any more than a speaker need, who knows how to manage his voice. That is the condition: you must know your instrument, and have it under control.

Experience seems to show that a certain formality of design befits stained glass. Formality of colour arrangement soon becomes tedious; but it is seldom, if ever, that the design of glass strikes one as unduly formal.

Mosaic glass is designed, it was said above, with a view to glazing. The skilled artist designs, so to speak, in leads; but they are not the design; in fact, they count only as contours, and, except in mere glazing, they should not be expected to give lines. It is a common fault to make leads take a part in the design which they will not play in the glass.

In drawing, strong, firm, even angular lines are valuable, if not imperative. The radiating light softens them. Drawing which is already suave is likely to be too soft in the glass, to want accent. Only experience will tell you how much you must attenuate fingers and the like in your drawing in order that the light shall fill them out, and give them just their normal plumpness. The beginner never allows enough for the spreading of light.

Glass painters who know what they are about use plenty of solid painting out; but it takes experience to do it cunningly. An artist whose métier is really glass is not careful of the appearance of his drawings. Cartoons are nothing but plans of glass, not intrinsically of any account. Really good glass is better than the drawings for it—necessary as good sketches may be to please the ignorant patron.

New departures in technique will suggest themselves to every inventive mind. They may even be forced upon a man—as, by his own confession, they were forced upon Mr. Lafarge—by the inadequacy of the materials within his reach, or the incompetence of the workmen on whom he has to depend. Mr. Lafarge’s glass is sometimes very beautiful in colour, and is strikingly unlike modern European manufacture; but it is not so absolutely original in method as Americans appear to think. He seems to have discovered for himself some practices which he might have learnt from old or even modern work, and to have carried others a step further than was done before. The basis of his first idea, he explains, was in a large way to recall the inlay of precious stones that are set in jade by Eastern artists. That was practically the notion of the earliest Byzantine workers in glass. His use of other materials than glass in windows he might have learnt from China, Java, or Japan, where they use oyster, tortoise, and crocodile shell; or from ancient Rome, where mica, shells, and alabaster were employed. There is nothing very new in blended, streaked, or even wrinkled glass, except that moderns do by deliberate intention what the mediæval glass-maker could not help but do, and carry it farther than they. In chipping flakes or chunks out of a solid lump of glass, Mr. Lafarge certainly struck out an idea which had probably occurred to no one since, in prehistoric ages, man shaped his arrow heads and so on out of flint. He has produced very beautiful and jewel-like effects by means of this chipping, though the material lends itself best to a more barbaric style of design than the artist has usually been content to adopt. He has appreciated, no one better, the quality of glass, but not the fact that so characteristic a material as he adopts must rule the design. The attempt to get pictorial, atmospheric, or other naturalistic effects by means of it, soon brings you to its limitations. At the rendering of flesh it comes to a full stop.

The experiment has been tried by Mr. Lafarge of a minute mosaic of little pieces of glass between two sheets of white, all fused into one; but it appears to be too costly, if not too uncertain an expedient, to be really practical as a means of rendering the human face, more especially if you want to get expression, which is there of more importance than natural colour. Another new departure, the device of blowing glass into shapes, so as to get modelling in them, results so far in rather dumb and indeterminate form.

It is quite possible to melt together a mosaic of glass without the use of lead. That practice may yet come into use in window panes, but they will be as costly as they are fragile. In larger work there is no real artistic reason why lead or its equivalent should be avoided. How much old glass would have remained to us if it had been executed in huge sheets? Here and there perhaps a broken scrap in a museum.

It is not meant to suggest that we should do in the nineteenth century only what was done in times gone by. Our means are ampler now, our wants are more. We can follow tradition only so far as it suits our wants; and, in carrying it further, we are sure to arrive at something so different that it may be called a new thing. If old methods do not meet new conditions we must invent others. The problem of our day is how to reconcile manufacture with anything like art; or failing that, whether there is a livelihood for the independent artist-craftsman?

Whoever it may be that is to make our stained glass windows in the future, he will have to make them fit the times. He may discover new materials. Meanwhile it is of no use quarrelling with those he has. He must know them and humour them. Bars have to be accepted as needful supports, leads to be acknowledged as convenient joints; glass must be allowed its translucency, and painting kept to what it can best do. A window should own itself a window.

And what is the aim and use of a stained glass window? To “exclude the light,” said the poet, sarcastically. Yes, to subdue its garishness, soften its glare, tinge it with colour, animate it with form perhaps.

The man who means to do good work in windows will devote as serious study to old glass as a painter to the old masters. He will not rest satisfied without knowing what has been done, how it was done, and why it was done so; but he will not blind himself to new possibilities because they have never yet been tried. The pity is that often the antiquary is so bigoted, the glass painter so mechanical, the artist so ignorant of glass. The three men want fusing into one. The ideal craftsman is a man familiar with good work, old and new, a master of his trade, and an artist all the while; a man too appreciative of the best to be easily satisfied with his own work, too confident in himself to accept what has been done as final; a man experimenting always, but basing his experiments upon experience, and proving his reverence for the great men who light the way for him by daring, as a man has always dared, to be himself.