PLATE XXXIV
CANOPY, FROM ALL SAINTS', NORTH STREET, YORK
Fifteenth Century
XI
FOURTEENTH CENTURY GLASS
IN FRANCE
St. Pierre at Chartres.
In France the change of style seems to have occurred very much at the same time as in England. There is some transitional work in St. Urbain at Troyes, to which Viollet-le-Duc gives the date 1295. This would make it a few years earlier in all probability than the Chapter-House at York, but the type of grisaille is rather earlier too, still consisting partly, like that at Exeter, of conventional foliage. The clerestory windows of the fine church of St. Pierre at Chartres, whatever their precise date, certainly mark the local change from the previous style.
The church had been begun as early as 1150, but its progress was slow and it was not completed till 1225, though the choir had been glazed in 1172.[15] The upper part of this choir was, however, pulled down in 1270, and rebuilt with large traceried windows, filling all the wall space of the clerestory. This again was not finished till 1310, but this date probably refers to the completion of the interior decoration which was always preceded by the glazing of the windows. On the whole, I think it is fairly safe to conclude that the choir windows were done about 1300, or a little before.
The style is still that of the First Period but modified, experimentally as it were, to suit new conditions. Each window has four tall narrow lights with tracery above, and every other light is filled with two large figures placed one above the other each in a medallion, which is squeezed by the narrowness of the light into an elongated form, while the space between the medallions is filled in the old way with mosaic diaper of red and blue. In compliance, however, with the growing demand for more light in churches, the other two lights in each window are filled entirely with grisaille. This would give a lop-sided appearance to a single window, but seen together with only a slender shaft between window and window, they form a succession of alternate white and coloured vertical stripes all round the choir, an interesting and almost unique method of combining figure and grisaille. Altogether the clerestory windows may be considered as the very last work of the First Period already modified and influenced by the spirit of change that was in the air.
In the clerestory windows of the nave the change has already come about. Although in the richness of colouring there is still a reminiscence of the earlier style, yet the medallion has vanished, and everywhere, both over single figures and over subject panels, we find decorated canopies, not yet, however, of exaggerated proportions, and with a complete absence of yellow stain. In the general arrangement the same idea is seen as in the choir, but it has had to be adapted to a different form of window-opening. The nave is part of the original church of 1225, and the clerestory windows consist, like those of the Cathedral, of broad lights grouped in pairs, with a rose above each pair—the germ of tracery. Every alternate pair is entirely filled with small coloured scenes from the life of a saint,—no longer in medallions, but each framed under a small white canopy,—but the windows between them have only a vertical stripe of colour down the centre of each light containing two large figures, one above the other, while the rest of the light is filled with grisaille ([Plate XXIII.]).