In this work Pugin was fortunate in the efficient assistance that was at his command, and the drawings by his son-in-law and pupil, John Powell, by Burgess and others, show how admirably the master mind was served. The drawings reproduced here were probably designed by Pugin, but the actual work is that of John Powell.
However imbued with the mediaeval spirit Pugin was, the Renaissance feeling unmistakably asserts itself in these designs, and in spite of the Gothic detail of the tracery they seem to associate themselves naturally with the Tudor heraldry rather than with that of an earlier time. Indeed, it is possible that Pugin was not unmindful of this, for there is little doubt that he had studied the Renaissance work that is to be found, as well as that of the Middle Ages, in the neighbouring Abbey.
Fig. 208.—Cartoon for Stained Glass. (Upper Part) Royal Gallery, Houses of Parliament.
Tudor heraldry marked the close of the Middle Ages. In character it was a combination of the mediaeval style with that of the Renaissance; that is to say, it was the expression of what remained of mediaeval regard for its subject, in a form that was strongly influenced by the new feeling in Art.
Besides the technical knowledge and the power of draughtsmanship there is ample evidence of individual design working through various influences, handling and assimilating them, a further proof that no one possessing real artistic power, in whatever degree, is content merely to reproduce the dry bones of any period. However that may be, they are very beautiful drawings, serving admirably as models of working drawings, in which is set forth all that is necessary to the carrying out of the work, and I am much indebted to Messrs. Hardman for permission to reproduce them.
The disposition of the lead is very carefully shown throughout, and the smaller details are drawn just so far as is necessary for the direction of the painter. Repetitions of figures being similarly finished only when they differ in some important respect from the initial shape, as in the case of the lion in the base of the shield of the Royal Arms (Fig. 208), when the pose is sufficiently varied from the upper ones, by the field space, as to warrant its separate treatment. These arms occupy the upper part of the light in the Royal Gallery, Fig. 209 being the lower part of the same window. Perhaps the most remarkable for vigour is the little white horse which so admirably occupies its space, a quatrefoil opening (Fig. 210). All the animals are full of vitality, but none have quite so much as this. In this respect it may well be contrasted with the much inferior Dragon of Cadwallader in Fig. 209. The character of the unicorn (Fig. 211) is altogether unusual in English heraldry, and follows the foreign type which derives its form from that of a goat with one horn, instead of that which is the combination of a horse’s body with the legs of a stag and the tail of a lion, a form with which other examples have made us familiar. The wild boar of Richard III (Fig. 212), for all his enormous tusks, seems not unworthy of the irreverent way in which he is referred to, in a working note pencilled on the cartoon, as “the pig.”
Fig. 209.—Cartoon for Stained Glass. (Lower Part) Royal Gallery, Houses of Parliament.
