Stained glass of the middle ages in England and France

by Hugh Arnold

Early fifteenth century work.

For the first part of the century, as I have said, the number of windows produced in France seems to have been few. Such events as the disaster of Agincourt, the conquest of France by Henry V., and its deliverance by Joan of Arc can have left little money or thought for stained-glass windows. The names of the maîtres verriers of the cathedrals show that all through the time there were men who carried on the tradition, but their output seems to have been small. What windows they have left us do not show the same complete change from the work of the previous century that we find in England; the style did not as in England crystallize into a definite form, but remained as a transitional style between that of the fourteenth and late fifteenth centuries. In its general outlines the design did not at first differ greatly from that of the fourteenth century, but, as in England, the white canopy touched with stain took the place of all others, and there was a general increase in the amount of white in windows. In detail, however, the canopy altered slowly, and it was never as in England reduced to an almost flat pattern by the use of strong line work, but persisted in the attempt to imitate solid stone-work.

It is not till the second half of the century, when the wars were over, and France had settled down to quiet reconstruction under Louis XI., that we find any great revival of the art, and then it is very different to contemporary work in England.

Evreux.

There is a good deal of fifteenth century work still remaining at Rouen, though there seems to be a gap in the list of maîtres verriers to the Cathedral from 1386 to 1426. It was during this gap, however, in the year 1400, that a window, which still remains, was placed in the clerestory of the Cathedral at Evreux. The general plan of this window is that of those later fourteenth century windows in which the whole light was filled with towering canopy work. The canopy differs only slightly in detail from the late fourteenth century type, though there is a more decided attempt at perspective in it, but, like the English work of the time, it is all white, touched with stain, and the general effect of the window is much whiter than that of earlier work. The drawing of the figures, which represent the donor, Bishop Guillaume de Cantier, presented to the Virgin by St. Catherine, does not show any very great change from late fourteenth century work.

St. Ouen at Rouen.

The fifteenth century windows at Rouen follow, for the most part, the general design of the fourteenth century windows in the same churches. Thus the window in the chapel of SS. Peter and Paul in St. Ouen, which Mr. Westlake thinks to be the work of Guillaume Barbe, 1459-85, has much the same arrangement and proportions as the S. Gervais window in the south choir aisle shown in [Plate XXV.]; that is to say, a small figure panel, under a big canopy, is set half-way up each tall light of which the top and bottom is filled with quarries. There is the same coloured background to the canopy, ending at the top in the same arched shape, but in the treatment of the canopy itself one finds a difference not only from fourteenth century work but from English work of the fifteenth century. The French canopy, as I have said, had never, like the English, been reduced to an almost flat pattern of intricate line work, and in these Rouen windows one finds the artist already trying to imitate stone-work modelled in relief with results that are heavy and unsatisfactory. It is not that, in English work, individual shafts are not given a light and dark side, but the canopy is not, as in French work, modelled as a solid whole, and the strong line work seems to keep it right.

The revival.

It was not, however, till the second half of the century that any new life came into French stained-glass work, and when it came it brought with it a skill in picture-making that was borrowed from contemporary painting. To this period belong, I think, the fragments from Rouen shown in Plates [XLV.] to [XLIX.] The heads of St. Catherine and the old man, if compared with those from York, show the strong difference in facial type between French and English work at this time. The stain on the hair of St. Catherine is very coarse and inartistic as compared with English work, but then no other nation ever equalled the English in their delicate and refined use of stain.

St. Maclou.