Canopies.—Canopies occur now over subjects as well as single figures.
The canopy is designed in flat elevation. Any indication of perspective betokens the end of the period. It has broadish shafts, usually for the most part white, which terminate in pinnacles ([page 155]). It has seldom any architectural base: the figures stand upon grass or pavement. It has usually a three-cusped arch, and above that a pointed gable decorated with crockets and ending in a finial. Crockets and finial are usually in strong, brassy yellow. Above are pinnacles and shrinework in white and colour, including as a rule a fair amount of yellow.
It may rise to a great height, dwarfing the figure beneath it. This occurs very especially in German work.
Sometimes the most conspicuous thing in the window is this disproportionate canopy. Its very disproportion is characteristic of the period.
In German work one great brassy canopy will frequently be found stretching right across the several lights of the window, over-arching a single subject. This triptich-like composition will occupy, perhaps, two-thirds of the height of the window. The background behind the pinnacles of this canopy may be either of one colour or of geometric diaper in mosaic (elsewhere characteristic of the Early period), finished off by a more or less arbitrary line—a cusped arch, for instance—above which is white glass. This kind of canopy has, by way of exception, an architectural base.
Another German practice is to fill the window with huge circular subject medallions, occupying the entire width of the window, and intersected by the mullions.
Single-light windows have sometimes a central elongated medallion or panel subject (without canopy), above and below which is ornamental grisaille.
228. Early Decorated Figure, Troyes.