15th CENTURY “CANOPY” WINDOW, SAINTE CHAPELLE, RIOM.
Gothic details carefully elaborated. Curtains suspended across backs of niches give the artist another colour, while white winding scrolls assist canopy portions in admitting light. Donors are here more important but not yet intrusive, as seen later.
CLERMONT-FERRAND
The situation of this city is as beautiful as it is remarkable. Imagine a long, fertile plain from which rises suddenly a great range of hills. The plain is monotonously flat and the hills are abruptly steep, while higher than all their heights towers the round-topped mountain of Puy-de-Dôme, which gives its name to this department of France. Nestling just below the hills, upon the extreme western edge of the level country, lies the vigorous and progressive city of Clermont-Ferrand, whose activities and commerce are fed by roads leading in every direction across the broad expanse of the fertile district of Limagne. From the top of the cathedral tower the view is most striking and delightful. To the east, as far as the eye can reach, stretches out a long vista of cultivated fields, but when we turn to the west the change is positively startling. Hill is piled on hill and mountain on mountain, and all so near at hand as to make us feel that, with the naked eye, we can discern figures moving on the top of the Puy-de-Dôme, whose knob-like crest towers proudly above its surrounding and supporting heights. There are but few views like this in France, for it is rare to find so bold a range of hills rising so sharply from so wide a plain.
After descending the many steps which take us back into the cathedral, we shall soon be convinced that if most of the thirteenth century glass towns had not been so accessible to Paris, a visit to this cathedral must have been suggested in order to see the fine set of medallion windows that in the apse chapels form a screen of gleaming sombre colour all around the choir—a screen so complete as to produce that effect of glistening caverns which we have found so beautiful in the glass of that century. Clermont-Ferrand was left off the thirteenth century list partly because of its distance from Paris, and partly because, if that distance had been overcome, there are no other towns in its vicinity noteworthy for their thirteenth century glass. Now that we are considering the glass of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, distance from Paris no longer proves an argument against this visit, because that period cannot be seen unless one is willing to go far afield. Besides, Clermont-Ferrand fits nicely into a series of towns rich in glass of these centuries, so we have every reason for the visit at this juncture. The cathedral is a noble example of Gothic, the spacious nave being separated from the choir by two transepts, each of which possesses a fine rose window of the fourteenth century with a gallery of small lancets below. These rose windows seem thrust too high up against the roof; in fact, if it were not for the row of lancets below, the effect would be unpleasant. This method of placing them in the wall is, however, in accordance with the best traditions of that time. The glass panels which go to make up the rose windows radiate in distinct lines from the centre. The lancets below the south rose are filled with diaper in rich colour, while across them, as if to bind them together, are drawn two bands of white rosettes. The lancets under the north rose have circles and spots of colour on a grisaille ground. Of the glass that once adorned the nave, practically nothing remains but the small roses at the tops of the windows, but these are quite attractive. It is to the choir that we must turn for the greatest charm of the interior. The sober richness of the thirteenth century panels in the chapels below is admirably set off and accompanied by the well-lighted clerestory above. Around this clerestory appears a row of large fifteenth century figures in colour framed in canopies upon a background of grisaille quarries (diamond-shaped panes). Perhaps there is a little too much contrast between the figures and the quarries, but the effect is good and certainly the light is admitted in a more satisfactory way than at Chartres, where the monks, to secure more light, replaced the rich borders of the early choir clerestory windows by white glass. As seen from the nave or from the transepts, the choir is most pleasing, a warm half light below and a brilliant clerestory above. In the two easternmost panels of the latter the artist shows us how it was sometimes possible to make one large picture by the juxtaposition of two or more, which at first glance seem entirely distinct. On the left is the Virgin Mary in what appears to be a large oval frame. On the right, and facing her, is a bust of the Father emerging from clouds. Although at first these two panels seem entirely separate, a comparison of the subject of each indicates that taken together they form a picture of the Annunciation. This method was not uncommon. At Tours, three eastern medallions of the clerestory, although seemingly distinct, really combine to form the Last Supper. We should not fail to notice at Clermont-Ferrand how very harmoniously the styles of different centuries assist each other in producing a well-glazed interior. We do not find the conflict in effect which exists at Bourges. In fact, there are but few places where glass epochs are combined in such an attractively unobtrusive manner.