156. SUBJECT, S. VINCENT, ROUEN, 1525.
A change of period is indicated by the departure from the disc-shaped nimbus. On [pages 207], [210], [234], [397], the nimbus is shown in perspective; an attempt is even made to make it hover above the head, an effect not possible to produce in leaded glass; even at Arezzo it is not achieved. Neither is the use of a mere ring of light, whether in flat or in perspective, a happy substitution for the Gothic colour disc, as may be seen, for example, at Cologne. The idea of the nimbus only keeps within the border line which separates the sublime from the ridiculous, so long as the thing is frankly accepted as a symbol, not as an effect. But, were it otherwise, the use of the strongly marked disc of colour about the head of prominent personages has an enormous value as a means of distinguishing them from the background or from surrounding figures. Its decorative importance is no less than its symbolic. Very especially is this so in glass; and the glass painter who wantonly departs from its use, reduces it to a mere ring (which does not separate it at all from the background) or poises it in the air, is beginning to wander from the way, narrow if you please, which leads to success in glass. This is said with some reluctance in face of the all but perfect little panel from S. Bonnet, at Bourges, on [page 210]. It is true that there the nimbus of the boy saint, though in perspective, does by its dark tone separate the head from the light ground, as the face is separated from the darker drapery of his teacher; and, in so far, little of definition is sacrificed; but, after all, admirably as the design is schemed, the oval nimbus is not a whit less conventional than the round disc of mediæval times, and it does lack something of distinction and dignity which that conveyed. The date inscribed (1544) serves to remind us that we are nearing the middle of the century, at which period glass painting may safely be said to have reached its zenith and to be nearing the verge of decline.
It will have been seen in the examples lately instanced how story is gradually more and more naturally set forth in glass. There is now no vestige of flat treatment left. Even the standing figure ([page 191]) stands forth from his niche, and though he may be backed by a curtain of damask, there is shown above that a background of receding architecture. So in the S. Bernard windows at Shrewsbury ([pages 56], [203]) there is architectural distance shown in perspective, and again in the subjects from Fairford, whether it be the portcullised gate of Jerusalem that is represented ([page 251]), or the very inadequate palace of King Solomon ([page 188]), or the Garden of Eden, in which the scene of the Temptation is primitively pourtrayed ([page 372]), there is some attempt to render the scene. Even in the fifteenth century work at Troyes ([page 194]) the Prodigal is not merely shown among the swine, joining them in a dinner of gigantic acorns, but he leans against an oak tree, and in the distance is a little forest of trees. In Renaissance glass the scene is much more naturally rendered, and forms almost invariably an important part of the composition. Witness the palace of Herod ([page 74]) when Salome dances before him, which is a great advance upon the Gothic throne-room of King Solomon ([page 188]).
157. SUBJECT, S. BONNET, BOURGES.
The scene takes one of three forms: either it is architectural, or it is landscape, or it is of architecture and landscape combined. A very favourite plan of the French was to show distant architecture (glazed in deep purple) through which were seen glimpses of grey sky, and perhaps a peep of landscape; and it resulted invariably in a beautiful effect of colour. In fact, a scheme of colour which recurs again and again at Rouen, and in other French glass of the first part of the sixteenth century, consists in the introduction of figures in rich colour and white upon a background where white, green, purple, and pale blue predominate to such an extent as to give quite a distinctive character to the glass. The more distant landscape was painted very delicately upon the pale grey-blue glass which served for sky, as shown on [page 255], and in the same way architecture was also painted upon it. In the view through the arches above the screen in a window at Montmorency ([page 213]), both trees and buildings are represented in that way upon pale grey glass, the green of the trees and hills stained upon it. Sometimes the distance is painted upon white, as at King’s College, Cambridge; but in France the pale grey-blue background is so usual as to be quite characteristic of the period. All this is a long way from the mere diaper of clouds which in the early fifteenth century sometimes took the place of damask pattern upon the blue which formed a background to the Crucifixion, or other scene out of doors. It is now no longer a case of symbolising, but of representing, the sky, and it is wonderful what atmospheric quality is obtained by the judicious use of pale blue painted with the requisite delicacy. The beauty of this kind of work, especially on a small scale, is beyond dispute. Together with the rendering of the flesh, it implies consummate skill in painting. The painter comes quite to the front; but he justifies himself inasmuch as he is able to hold the place. He does what his Gothic predecessors could not have done, and does it perfectly. Could the Gothic artist have painted like this, he also might have been tempted so far in the pictorial direction as to have sacrificed some of the sterner qualities of his design.
The architectural environment of the figures on [page 213] fulfils somewhat the function of the Perpendicular canopy; it forms a kind of setting of white for the colour; but, in the first place, it does not pretend to frame them at the side, and, in the second, the attempt at actual perspective necessitates an amount of shading upon the white glass which detracts at once from its purity and from its value as setting to the colour. The idea is there that you see through the window into space; and, though that effect is never obtained, it is wonderful how far some of the glass painters later in the century went towards illusion. A certain false air of truth was sometimes given to the would-be deception by an acknowledgment of the window-shape—that is, by making the foremost arch or arches follow the shape of the window head, and form, as it were, a canopy losing itself in perspective. Architecture proper to the subject, or not too inappropriate to it, is sometimes schemed so far to accommodate itself to the window-shape as to form, with the white pavement, a more or less canopy-like setting for the figures. It may be a sort of proscenium, the sides of which recede into the picture, and form what may be called the scenery. At King’s College, Cambridge, Esau is seen bargaining away his birthright at a table where stands the coveted pottage, in the midst of spacious halls going back into distant vistas, seen through a sort of canopy next the actual stonework. That concession to the framework of the window does mend matters somewhat. The base of the picture [opposite], for example, is much more satisfactory than it would have been had it not acknowledged the window-sill; but the architecture in the top part of the lights is not a frame to the picture at all, nor yet a finish to the glass: it is part of the picture, which thus, you may say, occupies the window as a picture its canvas. In reality that is not quite so. There is some acknowledgment, though inadequate, of the spring of the arch by a horizontal cornice parallel with the bar; and the arcading, though interrupted by the mullion and by the marble columns, steadies the design; and altogether the architecture is planned with ingenuity, though without frank enough acceptance of the window-shape. One would be more tolerant to such misguided freedom of design were it not for the kind of thing it led to. It must be admitted that both French and Flemings, until they began to force their perspective, and to paint shadow heavily, did very beautiful and effective work in this way.
A multitude of figures, as, for example, in the Judgment of Solomon at S. Gervais, Paris, more or less in rich colour, could be held together by distant architecture and foreground pavement largely consisting of white glass, in a way which left little to be desired, except fuller acknowledgment of the stonework. But it took a master of design to do it, and one with a fine sense of breadth and architectural fitness.