Windows: A Book About Stained & Painted Glass

by Lewis F. Day

A picture, then, in mediæval times was a work of decorative art, designed to fit a place, to fulfil part of a scheme of decoration, in which it might more often than not take the first place, but no more; it had no claim to independence.

In glass the picture obeyed two conditions which more or less pulled together: as art it subserved to decorative and architectural effect; as craftsmanship it acknowledged and accepted the limitations of glass painting. In the course of years the ideal of architectural fitness underwent successive changes, and the limitations of the glass painter grew less; his scope, that is to say, was widened, and his art took what we call more pictorial shape. Still, so long as the pictorial ideal itself was restrained within the limits of mediæval ambition, glass painting might safely approach the pictorial. It was not until painting broke loose from traditional decorative trammels and set up, so to speak, on its own account, until pictorial came to mean something widely different from decorative, that the term became in any way distinctive of one kind of art or another. It is in that later sense that the word pictorial is here used.

Artists still differ, and will continue to differ, as to the precise use of the term. There are artists still who contend that, since in old time art was decorative, and since in their opinion all art should be decorative, therefore the picture which is not decorative is not art. Arguing thus in a circle, they would say (the pictorial including in their estimation the perfection of decorative fitness, and all art which overshot the mark ceasing to count with them) that art was always at its best when it was most pictorial. But that is a species of quibbling about words which not only leads us no further, but hinders mutual understanding. It is wiser to accept words in the sense in which they are generally understood, and to try and see where the real difference of opinion is.

Difficult it may be, impossible even, to draw the line between a picture which is decorative and decoration which is pictorial; but there is no difficulty in drawing a band on one side of which is decoration and on the other picture. You have only to draw it wide enough. If we can succeed in defining a picture as distinguished from a work of decorative art, and can then show how a stained glass window, in attempting to conform to conditions which we have agreed to call pictorial, fails of its decorative function, it will then not be so difficult to see how, in proportion as glass aims at the pictorial, it falls short of making good windows. Granted, then, that a picture may fulfil all decorative conditions, and that a decoration may sometimes rightly be pictorial, that the two go, as historically they did, a long way hand in hand, it is contended that there is a point at which decoration and picture part company and take distinctly different ways; thenceforth, if either is led away by the other, it is at the cost of possible success in the direction more peculiarly its own.

Now, the first point at which picture definitely parts company with decoration is where the painter begins to consider his work apart from its surroundings. The problems the artist may set himself to solve are two. “How shall I adorn this church, this clerestory, this chancel, this window, with stained glass?”—that is distinctly a problem of the decorator; “How shall I realise, on canvas or what not, this thought of mine, this fact in nature, this effect seen or imagined?”—that is distinctly a problem of the painter. Each, it is granted, may be swayed more or less by the other consideration also, but according as a man starts with the one problem or the other, and seeks primarily to solve that, he is painter or decorator. Suppose him seriously to endeavour to combine pictorial and decorative qualities in his work, there will come times when he has perforce to choose between the two. Upon the choice he makes will hang the final character of his work, decorative or pictorial.

We are too much in the habit of laying down laws as to what a man may or may not do in art. He may do what he can. He may introduce as much decorative intention into his picture, as much pictorial effect into his decoration, as it will stand; it is not till he overweights one with the other, attempts more than his means or his power allow him, and fails to do the thing that was to be done, that we can say he has gone wrong.

When the two ideals of decoration and painting were more nearly one, and in proportion as that was so, success in the two directions was possible; when painting aimed at effects, of painting—in proportion, that is, as it became pictorial—it was impossible. It is safe to say, since masters attempted it and failed—since, for example, the finest work in glass which aims at the pictorial and depends upon painting ends always in being either thin or opaque in effect—that the happy medium was not found. The fact is, the time came when a painter, in order to design successfully for glass, was called upon to relinquish some of the effects he had come greatly to value in painting: effects of light and shade, atmosphere, reflected light, relief, perspective, violent foreshortening. To seek these at the expense of qualities proper to decoration and to glass, was to attempt picture; to sacrifice such pictorial qualities to considerations of architectural fitness, to the quality of the glass, its translucency, its colour, its consistent treatment, was to attempt decoration; and in proportion as the sacrifice is not made, the work of the glass painter may be characterised as “pictorial.” There should now be no possible misunderstanding as to what is meant by the word. It implies something of reproach, but only as applied to glass. Let the pictorial flourish, in its place—that is, in picture. All it is here meant to assert is that, pictures being what they are, what they were already by the end of the sixteenth century, the pictorial element in stained glass is bound to spoil the window.

There are two respects in which a stained glass window differs from a picture: first, in that it is a window; second, in that it is glass. Suppose we take these two points separately. It scarcely needs showing that the designing of a window is a very different thing from the painting of a picture. In the first place, the architectural frame of the window is there, arbitrarily fixed, whereas the painter chooses his frame to suit his picture. The designer of a window has not only to accept the window-shape, but to respect both it and the architecture of the building. The scale of his work, the main lines of its composition, if not more, are practically determined for him by architectural considerations, just as the depth of colour in his scheme is determined by the position of his window and the amount of light he desires “or is allowed” to shut out. Moreover, he has to accept the window plane, to acknowledge it as part of the building, to let you feel, whatever he does, that it is a window you see, and not something through the window or standing in it. That was tried, as we have seen, at Gouda and S. Gudule; but, even if the illusion had been achieved, it would have been destructive of architectural effect. The idea of a picture seen through the mullions of a window is one of the will-o’-the-wisps which led glass painters astray. They did not succeed; and, had they done so, they would have given a very false, and to some of us a very uncomfortable, impression of not being protected from the outer air.

Mullions are in any case a very serious consideration. It has been shown already ([page 197]) how the artist sought continuity of subject through the lights of his window, and gradually extended his picture across them. And if he is at liberty to occupy a four-light window with the Virgin and Child and the Three Kings, and if it is lawful to introduce more than one figure into a light, why may not each king be accompanied by an attendant, holding his horse or bearing gifts; why should not the Kings kneel in adoration; why should not Joseph be there, the manger, and the cattle; why should there not be one landscape stretching behind the Magi, binding the whole into one picture? So with the Crucifixion. If the Virgin and S. John may occupy sidelights, why not introduce as well in a larger window the two thieves, the Magdalene at the foot of the cross, the good centurion, the soldiers, the crowd? Obviously there is no reason why the subject should not be carried across a window; and from the time that windows were divided into lights it was done, at all events in the case of certain subjects, such as the Tree of Jesse, which spread throughout the window, or the Last Judgment, for which the available space was yet never enough.

But there is a wide difference between designing a subject which extends through the whole width of a window and designing it so that it appears to be seen through the window. In the one case the mullions are seriously taken into account; in the other they are ignored. If you were looking at a scene through a window, of course the mullions would interfere. Why, therefore, consider them if you wish to produce the effect of something seen through? Naturally you would not allow the stonework to cut across the face of a principal personage, or anything of that kind; but, apart from that, its intervention would only add to the air of reality. The problem of dealing with the mullions is thus rather shirked than solved. Its solution is not really so difficult as would seem. Mullions count for much less in the window than one would suppose. The eye, for example, follows naturally the branches of a Tree of Jesse from one light into another, and it is not felt that the stonework interferes with it at all seriously, whilst the scheming of the figures, each within a single light, is a very distinct acknowledgment of its individuality. So in the case of a subject. If the design is so planned that the important figures are grouped in separate lights, the landscape or other continuous background helps to hold the picture together, and is not hurt by the mullions.