225. Grisaille, Salisbury.
J. Akerman, Photo-lith, London, W. C.
So long as the painted foliage keeps closely within the formal lines of strapwork, etc., it is, at all events in English glass, a sign of comparatively early thirteenth century work.
Later in the century the scroll winds rather more freely about the window ([page 143]).
The omission of the cross-hatched background and the more natural rendering of the foliation ([page 386]) announce the approach to the Decorated period.
Figure subjects in colour, planted, as it were, upon grisaille or quarry lights (Poitiers, Amiens), and grisaille borders to windows with figures in rich colour (Auxerre), are of exceptional occurrence.
Winston gives the year 1280 as the limit of the Early period, but there seems no absolute reason for drawing the line at that date. The use of stain, which was the beginning of a new departure in glass, does not pronounce itself before the fourteenth century. It seems, therefore, more convenient to include the last twenty years of the century in the first period, and to call it thirteenth century, accepting the more naturalistic type of foliage, when it occurs, as sign of transition; for, apart from that, the later thirteenth century work is not very markedly different from what was done before 1280.
Fourteenth Century.
Decorated or Intermediate Gothic.—Decorated glass grows characteristically livelier in colour than Early glass; at first it becomes warmer, owing to the use of more yellow, then lighter, owing to the use of white. It does not divide itself so obviously into coloured and grisaille.
The figure subjects include, as time goes on, more and more white glass. The grisaille contains more colour.
Figures and figure subjects are now very commonly used in combination with grisaille ornament in the same window. That is a new and characteristic departure ([page 159]).