FROM SPENSER'S "FAERIE QUEENE." DESIGNED BY WALTER CRANE.
O SACRED hunger of ambitious mindes,
And impotent desire of men to raine!
Whom neither dread of God, that devils bindes,
Nor lawes of men, that common-weales containe,
Nor bands of nature, that wilde beastes restraine,
Can keepe from outrage and from doing wrong,
Where they may hope a kingdome to obtaine:
No faithe so firme, no trust can be so strong,
No love so lasting then, that may enduren long.
Witness may Burbon be; whom all the bands
Which may a Knight assure had surely bound,
Untill the love of Lordship and of lands
Made him become most faithless and unsound:
And witness be Gerioneo found,
Who for like cause faire Belgè did oppresse,
And right and wrong most cruelly confound:
And so be now Grantorto, who no lesse
Then all the rest burst out to all outragiousnesse.
From books let us turn for further illustration to another source of illumination, namely, windows; where, in the design of leaded and stained glass, we shall find examples of another strictly conditioned and very beautiful province of design.
In the course of its historical development stained glass seems to show much the same or corresponding general characteristics at different periods as to style, as may be traced in other branches of art. The windows of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were characterized by geometric pattern, and made up of small pieces of glass, the figure subjects small, set in geometric inclosures or quatrefoil panels and showing Byzantine influence in their treatment.[5] It may be, too, that the windows of the early Gothic period were influenced by the rich mosaic work of the Byzantine artists, but in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as windows became larger and more important features in architecture, and stone tracery enabled very large openings to be filled with coloured and leaded glass, both the figures and the pieces of glass became larger, the general design more pictorial, till in the early sixteenth century we get perspectives and heavily-shaded figures, and large masses of light and dark, until the art perished in eighteenth century transparencies.
THIRTEENTH CENTURY GLASS FROM THE SAINTE CHAPELLE, PARIS (SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM).
THIRTEENTH CENTURY GLASS FROM THE SAINTE CHAPELLE, PARIS (SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM).
It perished because the essential fundamental conditions were ignored or not made important decorative use of. Leading, instead of being regarded as the backbone of the design, its fundamental anatomy, and essential decorative as well as mechanical characteristic, was rather looked upon as an awkward if necessary interruption in the picture, and the glass-painter, in endeavouring to follow the painter on canvas in his effects of relief and chiaroscuro, lost all the peculiar beauty and character of his own art without gaining the distinction of the one he would fain have rivalled.[6]