Stained glass of the middle ages in England and France

by Hugh Arnold

The portrait of a certain abbot as donor enables us to date these nave windows with fair accuracy as about 1307-8, which makes them slightly later than the Peter de Dene window in York Minster. The grisaille is, however, of a distinctly earlier type, having the background still cross-hatched, but at Chartres one would expect the old traditions to die hard.

Fourteenth century glass in Chartres Cathedral.

There is fourteenth century work in the Cathedral, which is interesting in its way. The window given, about 1307-10, by "Geoffrey the Restorer," a canon whose "restoration" of the thirteenth century windows was of a different kind to that now in vogue, is the work of an archæologist and an enthusiast for the older style and can hardly be taken as typical. Very different is the strip of glazing which Canon Thierry got leave, in 1328, to insert in the foot of one of the big thirteenth century windows in the south transept to light an altar he had founded. Even for its date it is remarkable, consisting, as it does, of figures (Canon Thierry kneeling to the Virgin surrounded by saints) executed entirely in white and silver stain, without any coloured glass, placed directly on a background of white and stain quarries. It is perhaps the first examples of this treatment of figures, and anything more hopelessly out of keeping with the deep and solemn colours above it can hardly be imagined, so that it is difficult to do it justice. An example of coloured figures placed directly on quarries is the Annunciation, which dates from 1350, in the south choir aisle, but it is not a very interesting group. The chapel of St. Piat contains some glass of the latter half of the century, but the treatment it has received prevents one forming an opinion of it.

Evreux.

The Cathedral of Evreux is rich in remains of fourteenth century glass, which, like that at York, illustrates the progress of design during the century, the windows being of all dates from the opening of the fourteenth century till well on in the fifteenth. The earliest are those in the choir chapels, some of which are of about the same date as the Merton College glass, which, indeed, they at once call to mind. As at Merton, small coloured panels containing figures under low canopies are made to decorate long lights of grisaille. For the most part, as at Merton, the figures consist of donors in the outer lights, kneeling to their patron saints in the inner ones, though occasionally one finds subjects, such as the part of a Life of St. Martin in one of the northern chapels. One of the chapels in the apse is remarkable for the charming use of heraldry in the border. The windows contain figures of the Count of Evreux kneeling to the Virgin. His arms are the lilies of France with a bend "componée" of argent and gules, and the fleur-de-lis and the bend are repeated alternately all the way up the border, on a ground of blue, with delightful effect.

Later than these is the Harcourt window, the earliest apparently of those in the clerestory, which must date from between 1310 and 1327, though I am inclined to think it is nearer the later date. Here again one has the arrangement, so characteristic of the fourteenth century, of kneeling donors in the outer lights and their patron saints in the inner,—the first idea in nearly every fourteenth century window is the safety of the donor's soul,—but here the coloured panels are placed at the very bottom of the window, with grisaille above, an arrangement which one finds again in later work at Rouen. It has the advantage of bringing the figures nearer the eye, but as a design it is hardly happy.

St. Ouen at Rouen.

The fine church of St. Ouen at Rouen is very rich in fourteenth century glass of the first half of the century. The oldest, perhaps, is in the clerestory windows, which afford another example of the practice found, I think, earlier in France than in England, of placing figures directly on a background of quarries ([Plate XXIV.]). From the small amount of stain used I do not think they are likely to be later than 1330, though the queer little pedestal with its ogival arch does not look a very early feature.

Rather later than these are the immense windows in the choir aisles, of which [Plate XXV.] is an example. In comparing them to those in York Minster, they seem to me to come, in point of development, between the aisle windows of the nave and the west windows, but are far better than the latter; yet, although there is hardly a detail in them which cannot be found in an earlier form at Merton College or York, they have, nevertheless, a character all their own, a hint of growing divergence between the two schools. The subject of this particular window is the Life of St. Gervais, but it is such an unimportant detail in the design as to be hardly worth mentioning, the real interest of the windows being their planning and ornament. They are planned on precisely the same system as the windows in Merton College chapel, in the choir chapels at Evreux, and the aisles of York nave, but the canopies are more highly developed, the quarries are "true" quarries, and stain is much more freely used. Plates [XXVI.]-[XXX.] show, in detail, the use that has been made of it in the grisaille borders and bosses of this window. Even the canopies that are all yellow are, I fancy, coloured with stain; but the artist has been alive to the danger of too much yellow in the window, and has made every other canopy white, merely touched with stain, a form which in time was to supersede the other altogether. If you compare the little figure from one of these canopies in [Plate XXX.] with the little border figures from Peter de Dene's window at York, you will see how the work is beginning to lose the mosaic character it had inherited from the previous centuries. The grisaille patterns, as well as the borders, show descent from, or at least common origin with, those of York and Merton—you can find that central stem with a wavy line on it in both; but there is a subtle difference in the Rouen work—a little more grace, and more care that the foliage shall not only decorate the whole space of white, but form a symmetrical pattern on each individual quarry, a tendency which, however, may also be found in English work towards the end of the century.