CHAPTER XXV.
THE USE OF THE CANOPY.
No one can have paid much attention to stained glass without observing the conspicuous part played in its design by the quasi-architectural canopy.
Inasmuch as it, in a sense, enshrines the figure, there exists some sort of symbolic reason for its use. But that is not enough to account for its all but universal employment. A more obvious excuse for it is, the purpose it fulfils in the construction of design. It is a means of accounting for the position of figures midway up the window, perhaps one above the other, and not standing upon the sill. It is at once framework and support to them, preventing them from seeming to float there in space.
Where the designer of the church designed also the glass for it, it was almost inevitable that he should plan it more or less upon architectural lines; and so we find that in windows known to have been designed by architects the canopy is very often the most conspicuous part of the design. But at all times the master-builder must have been a power, and at all times also even glaziers and glass painters must have been so intimately acquainted with forms of architecture, that it is not surprising they should have introduced them into their work.
The fact is, the designer happens upon something like a canopy almost without intending it, and, having arrived so far, perfects the resemblance to it. Suppose a window of four long lights, in each of which it is desired to introduce three figures. That means dividing it horizontally into three, which may be done by the use of bands of inscription, as at a in the diagram [overleaf]: there is no suggestion of architecture there. Supposing you wish to frame the window at the sides, so as to stop the picture, as at b, to the left of the diagram; you have still no very distinct suggestion of architecture. But if, the better to frame the picture, you add an extra band of colour, as shown at c, you arrive at once at something so like perspective as to indicate an architectural elevation. Indeed, that is precisely the form the canopy takes sometimes in Italian glass. Even when the cinque-centist framed his picture merely in lines he could hardly help giving them the appearance of mouldings, painting upon (as at Arezzo) egg-and-tongue or other familiar architectural enrichment in white and stain.
212. Diagram.