Fifteenth Century.
Perpendicular Glass.—By the fifteenth century the glass painter had quite made up his mind in favour of more light. He makes use of glass in larger sheets, and of lighter and brighter colour. His white is especially purer than before, and he uses it in much greater quantities.
232. FIGURES, S. MARY’S, ROSS.
So decidedly is this so, that a typical fifteenth century window strikes you as a screen of silvery-white glass in which are set pictures or patches of more or less brilliant, rather than intensely deep, colour.
Design.—Design takes, for the most part, the form of figure and canopy windows, schemed somewhat on the same lines as in the Decorated period—the subjects, that is to say, cross the window in horizontal bands.
But there is so much white glass in the canopy work—it is practically all in white (as stone) touched with stain (as gilding)—and it so entirely surrounds the figure subjects, that you do not so much notice the horizontal bands (into which the subjects really fall when you begin to dissect the design) as the mass of white in which they are embedded.
Canopies.—The larger Perpendicular windows are now crossed by stone transoms, so that very long lights do not, as a rule, occur.