The work of the countries and period I have chosen is of course the most important of all. There is beauty, it is true, in much Renaissance work (only a prig could resist the gaiety and charm of the windows of St. Vincent at Rouen), but it is for the most part beauty achieved in spite of, and not through, the material. There is beautiful mediæval work in Germany and Italy, but the Germans, till the Renaissance, clung to a rather lifeless and archaic convention, and the Italians were hampered by their greater knowledge of painting. The art has found its noblest expression in the work of the great school which for nearly the whole of the Middle Ages was common to France and England.
There is especial reason why we English should study the work of our own mediæval glass painters. They are the chief representatives of our primitive school of painting. It is true that there are English manuscripts in the museums, and there are the painted rood screens of Norfolk, including the superb example at Ranworth, and there is the portrait of Richard II. at Westminster; but of the painting which must once have covered the walls of our churches, there is little left but patches of faded colour clinging here and there to the plaster, and the occasional dim outline of a figure. Of our glass, on the other hand, in spite of four hundred years of destruction, a considerable quantity remains, and is worth far closer study than it has ever had.
I must gratefully acknowledge the help I have had from my brother, Mr. T. K. Arnold, especially in writing of the Canterbury glass of which he has made a very close study. My thanks are also due to Mr. Noel Heaton for information on the chemical composition of glass.
The publishers are fortunate in having been able to reproduce, for the illustrations, the very beautiful coloured drawings of Mr. Lawrence B. Saint, which are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
H. A.
CONTENTS
| CHAP. | PAGE | |
| 1. | The Making of a Window | [1] |
| 2. | The Beginnings of Stained Glass | [11] |
| 3. | The Style of the First Period | [29] |
| 4. | Twelfth Century Glass | [41] |
| 5. | Early Thirteenth Century Glass in England: Canterbury and Lincoln | [67] |
| 6. | Thirteenth Century Glass in France: Sens and Chartres | [85] |
| 7. | Other Thirteenth Century Windows. Early Grisaille | [109] |
| 8. | The Style of the Second Period | [123] |
| 9. | Early Fourteenth Century Glass in England: Merton College and Exeter | [151] |
| 10. | Fourteenth Century Glass at York | [161] |
| 11. | Fourteenth Century Glass in France | [183] |
| 12. | Late Fourteenth Century Glass in England: Transitional—Gloucester and the Work of the Winchester School | [195] |
| 13. | The Style of the Third Period | [211] |
| 14. | Fifteenth Century Glass at York | [225] |
| 15. | Fifteenth Century Glass in France | [241] |
| 16. | Malvern and Fairford | [251] |
| INDEX | [267] |