The Story of Chartres

by Cecil Headlam

The mediæval artist, however, was not content with a reasoned effect of colour, however beautiful. His windows must be ‘storied’ as well as ‘richly dight.’ They must repeat in glass the lessons read to the people by the statuary without. In those three superb twelfth-century azure windows of the west the Tree of Jesse, the Childhood of the Saviour, and the principal scenes of the Passion are represented. The rose above them, with its rubies and sapphires in a deep setting of stone, tells again the story of the Last Judgment. From the wounds of Jesus, who is seated on a throne of clouds, flows the blood which saves or condemns mankind. Angels, cherubim and apostles surround him. An aureole in quatrefoil is about His head. Above shine the instruments of the Passion, and four angels are blowing the last trump. The earth opens and the sea gives up its dead. Emerging from their tombs, the dead look towards the Supreme Judge. S. Michael (as on the south porch) is weighing souls in the balance. Some are being led to Abraham’s bosom, whilst others, dragged by demons, fall into the vivid flames of hell.

A panel under the centre circle was destroyed by a cannon ball in the siege of 1591. It has been replaced by some fragments from another window. The rose of the north transept is called the Rose of France, because it was given to the Cathedral by S. Louis and Blanche of Castile. The Fleurs-de-lys of France and the Castles of Castile recall this fact when you see them repeated in their blue and gold in the medallions and the spandrels of the window. The rose itself is not so large as that of Notre-Dame-de-Paris, nor so delicately graceful as that of Amiens, but, as in the case of the western rose, the boldness of the masonry and the clear depths of the colouring lend to it a charm and beauty all its own. It represents the Glorification of Mary, the subject of the noble porch without.

In the centre, Mary seated on a throne, holds in her arms the Saviour of the world, and receives the homage of the angels, the Kings of Judah and the prophets, who are painted in these circles of twelve medallions. The panels of the second circle are rectangular.

Beneath the rose are five tall pointed windows of unforgettable splendour and extraordinary interest. King David with his harp of gold, Solomon the monarch with the blue fleur-de-lys and Jeroboam worshipping his calves of gold below, both stand forth from a background of purple, prefiguring the Kingship of the Son; Aaron, the high priest, with the rod that budded and the book of the law, wearing a curious red hat, and beneath him Pharaoh engulfed in the Red Sea; Melchisedek, with chalice and censer, and beneath him Nebuchadnezzar in front of the statue of gold, silver, iron and clay, represent beforehand the Priesthood of Christ. And all these rich Oriental figures support the enormous brown-faced portrait of S. Anne, who sits in the central light and carries the infant Mary.

The great white eyes of these figures seem to stare across at the rose of the south transept opposite, which represents the fulfilment of all that they had foreshadowed—the Glorification of Christ. The story is repeated by the statuary of the south porch without. This window was founded by Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux and Duke of Bretagne, who figures therefore with his wife and family and arms in the lower portions of the windows below the rose.

The arms of Dreux and Bretagne also appear with fine effect in the twelve quatrefoils of the rose, which correspond to the rectangular panels of the windows opposite. In the centre of the rose Christ enthroned blesses the world and holds in His left hand a large chalice. The surrounding medallions contain eight angels censing the four beasts and twenty-four elders before the throne, referred to in the Book of Revelations.

As in the north transept, five large pointed windows beneath complete the subject. The central figure is that of Christ presented to the faithful in the Virgin’s arms, whilst on either side are the four evangelists carried on the shoulders of the four great prophets; S. Matthew seated on Isaiah, S. Luke on Jeremiah, S. John (beardless, as always in mediæval portraiture, to typify his virginity) on Ezekiel, and S. Mark on David. The strange position of these naïve evangelists is intended to symbolise the fact that the new dispensation rests upon the old, even as the Christian Gothic of the upper church is built upon the Pagan Romanesque of the old basilica, the crypt beneath.

To the east, in the apse, seven great windows repeat the motive of the Glorification of Mary, and the artists, who, throughout this Cathedral of Notre-Dame, are never weary of portraying its patroness in every guise and every form, at every age, and almost as of every clime, represent her as receiving homage from the personages of the Old Testament, and even of S. Peter.

Not the least famous, not the least fascinating of these innumerable Madonnas, though candles are no longer burnt to her as they were of yore, is the window—the second in the south aisle of the choir after leaving the transept—which is known as the Notre-Dame de la belle Verrière. She is clad in bright vestments of azure, and, like the Virgin who appeared to the peasant girl at Lourdes, she has about her head an aureole of blue. Deep tones of red and brown form the background of the window from which the figure of the Madonna stands out, so that you might almost believe that she is about to step through into the dark aisles of the Cathedral that is hers.

This window belongs to the thirteenth century, but it is probably modelled on an earlier one of which there is mention. Like the three twelfth-century windows of the west, and especially the southernmost of these three, it is strikingly Byzantine in character. The Miracle at the Marriage of Cana and the Temptations of Christ fill the lower part of the light.