When the shape of the great Rose permitted it—if, that is to say, the circular outline was strongly pronounced—it was possibly further acknowledged by a fairly broad border, following it and disappearing, as it were, behind the stonework; otherwise, except in the case of smaller medallion-shaped openings, it was not usual to mark them by even so much as a border line. Small Roses had sometimes, as at Auxerre, a central figure medallion round which were secondary foliage medallions set in diaper. A certain waywardness of design, already remarked in medallion windows, was sometimes shown by filling the central medallion with ornament and grouping the pictures round it.
As the lights of a Rose window radiated from the centre, features which recurred throughout the series arranged themselves inevitably in rings; and according to the disposition of the emphatic features of the design, the rays or the rings pronounced themselves. This is partly the affair of the architect who sets out the stonework, but it lies with the glazier whether he choose to subdue or to emphasise either feature. It is hard to say why one or other of these schemes of glass design, in rays or in rings, should be preferred; but, as a matter of experience, the sun and star patterns are not among the most happy. Perhaps the stone spokes of a wheel window assert themselves quite enough any way, and the eye wants leading, not vaguely away from the centre, but definitely round the window.
The circular belts of pattern formed by medallions or other features answer to, and fulfil the part of, the horizontal bands in upright windows ([page 153]), and bind the lights together. The band has it all its own way in a mere “bull’s-eye,” such as you find in Italy, where there are no radiating lines of masonry. It is strongly pronounced in some circular medallion windows at Assisi, in which an extraordinarily wide border (a quarter of their diameter in width) is divided into eight equal panels, each enclosed in its own series of border lines, within which is a medallion set in foliated ornament. This is fourteenth century work; but, as in thirteenth century Roses, the bars follow and accentuate the main divisions of the window.
Even when it came to the glazing of a Rose window in a later Gothic style, it is not uncommon to find a series or two of medallions running round the window, as occurs at Angers. They hold the design together; but in the nature of the case they are on too small a scale for the pictures to count for more than broken colour. Indeed you may see here the relative value in such a position of small figure subjects and bold ornament. The scrollwork is as effective as the medallions are insignificant. In fact, compared to them, the illegible medallion subjects in the lancet lights below are readable by him who runs. It has to be confessed that quite some of the most beautiful and impressive Rose windows are perfectly unintelligible, even with a good field-glass. This is so with the West Rose at Reims. In the centre it is ablaze with red and orange, towards the rim it shades off into deliciously cool greens and greenish-yellows. It may mean what it may; the colour is enough.
Room for figure work on an intelligible scale is only to be found by a device which verges on the ridiculous. In the beautiful North Rose at S. Ouen, Rouen, figures which should be upright are arranged in a circle like herrings in a barrel. Similar figures on a smaller scale occur in certain tracery lights at Lincoln, two of which are here given. Again in the North Rose at Le Mans there are twenty-four radiating figures. In fact, they were customarily so arranged, even down to the sixteenth century, a period at which one does not credit the designer with mediæval artlessness.
It is obvious that out of a series of twenty or more figures, radiating like the spokes of a wheel, only a very few can stand anything like upright. The designer of the South Rose at S. Ouen has endeavoured to get over the difficulty, as well as to accommodate his design to the exceeding narrowness of the lights as they approach their axis, by giving his personages no legs, and making them issue from a kind of sheath or bouquet-holder. A number of the figures pretending to stand in the radiating lights by a Rose or wheel window must be ridiculously placed. And then there occurs the question as to whether they shall all stand with their feet towards the hub. Where the figures have space to float, it is different. The angels in the Late Gothic Rose window at Angers, with swirling drapery which hides their feet, and makes them by so much the less obviously human, if not more actually angelic, solve the difficulty of full-length figures (on any appreciable scale) in the only possible way.
185. Two Lights of a Rose Window, Lincoln.
A portion of a simple and rather striking wheel window of the Decorated period, in which concentric bands of ornament form a conspicuous feature, is shown [overleaf]. In the small Rose from Assisi ([page 278]) the glazier has very successfully supplemented the design of the architect, completing the four circles, and accentuating them further by glazing the central spandrils in much darker colour than the rest of the glass, which is mainly white.