The same tendency that caused the artist to substitute mosaic diaper for the scroll work in the setting of his medallions in coloured windows led him in time to fill large spaces of his grisaille windows with painted "quarries." "Quarries" (from the French carré) are small diamond-shaped panes, and were then the quickest and most economical way of glazing any given space. Sometimes towards the end of the century the painted pattern ran over the quarries independently of them, but more often in the thirteenth century each quarry was a repetition of the next, the whole thus forming a regular diaper. Sometimes each quarry has a thick black line painted parallel to two, or sometimes all four, of its sides at a distance of three quarters of an inch or so, leaving the space between it and the lead blank while the rest of the quarry is patterned. The effect of this when glazed together is that of interlacing white bands on a ground of pattern.
Apart from economy, the principal motive for the use of grisaille in windows was, as I have said, the need for light. In the Cathedral of Chartres, where there is no grisaille except that in the chapels already mentioned, and where practically all the other windows are filled with richly coloured glass, it is quite difficult to read in the nave on a dull day. It is possible, therefore, that in some churches a certain number of windows may have been deliberately reserved for grisaille.
Combination of grisaille and figure work.
It is not, however, till the very end of the thirteenth century, and then only rarely, that coloured figures and grisaille were combined in the same light as shown in the example from Poitiers in [Plate XV.], though this is a salient feature of the style of the succeeding period. In the clerestory windows of the choir of St. Pierre at Chartres, which belong to the closing years of the century, the problem has been attacked in an interesting and unique manner, but as the glass in that church really marks the transition to the succeeding period, I shall deal with it later.
Conclusion of the Early Period.
I must now leave the Early Period. If I have devoted a larger space to it than I have to give to either of those succeeding, it is because to me it is the most interesting of all. In all later work artists seem, by comparison, unsatisfied and trying, sometimes with more, sometimes with less, success, to reconcile opposing ideals in their work. Never again does one find the same perfect understanding of the limitations of the material, together with such daring and grandeur of conception, and such depth and earnestness in the ideas expressed.
PLATE XXII
ST. JOHN,
FROM EAST WINDOW OF SOUTH AISLE, ST. MARTIN'S,
MICKLEGATE, YORK
Fourteenth Century
VIII
THE STYLE OF THE SECOND PERIOD