Stained Glass of the Middle Ages in England and France Part 11

[Sidenote: The aisles of the nave.]

Next after the clerestory, the oldest windows in the nave are the first five from the east in each aisle. In these the style of the Second Period is fully developed and is in no sense transitional.

They are rather more advanced in style than the Merton College windows and are by a far finer artist, being, in fact, the finest work of the period that I know. They seem to me all to have been executed within a few years of each other, probably in continuous succession, and to show the gradual development which might be expected during the progress of the work.

Those on the north are the oldest and in the best condition, those on the south being much broken and confused, and one, alas! "restored."

The general design is the same in all and is a typical fourteenth century one, two horizontal bands of coloured panels surmounted by canopies running horizontally through all the lights, separated by panels of grisaille which have a coloured spot in the centre of each panel. It is characteristic of the fourteenth century that the whole of the lower panels are in nearly every window devoted to the donor, who is thus given as much s.p.a.ce as the subject. The grisaille is of the same type as at Merton. As in all early fourteenth century work, the sections divided by the heavy frame-bars are taken as the units of the design, the coloured panels with their canopies each occupying two sections and the grisaille panels one each. Nos. 2, 3, and 4 on the north were probably the first executed, as they contain no trace of yellow stain (Plate XVII.b). No. 5, from which the border of monks in their stalls in Plate XVII.a is taken, has a single touch of it in one place, but in No. 1 it is used, though still sparingly and tentatively, on the beaks and claws of the eagles in the borders of the outer lights (Plate XVII.c) and on the mail of the knights in the border of the centre light (Plate XVIII.), and here and there in the canopy. Another fresh development is the prolonging of the pinnacles of the canopy into the grisaille panel above.

[Sidenote: The Peter de Dene window.]

This window, which is sometimes called the Heraldic Window, from the number of coats of arms it contains, is the only one of them that has. .h.i.therto been the subject of any very close study, Mr. Winston having devoted a whole article to an extremely close and careful a.n.a.lysis of its heraldry, and to an account of the life of its donor, one Peter de Dene, whose portrait is in the central light and who was a churchman-politician under the first two Edwards. There is no s.p.a.ce here to repeat his arguments, and I will only say that, after reading them and rereading them, I find it very difficult not to accept his conclusion that the most probable date for the window is 1306. The subject panels represent the story of St. Catherine, but are the least interesting part of the window, of which the most charming feature is, perhaps, the border of the central light, which consists of miniature portraits of kings, queens, and n.o.bles whom the donor wished to compliment (Plate XVIII.). The two uppermost figures are those of a Templar and a Hospitaller; below them are the kings and queens of England and France, in allusion to Edward I.'s second marriage, and the recent peace concluded by it; below the Queen of France is the Heir-Apparent of England, and the remaining figures bear the arms of de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, Warrenne (both connected with the Royal Family), Beauchamp, Ros, Mowbray, Clifford, and Percy. The coats of arms which form the bosses in the white panels are those of foreign monarchs with whom the King of England was connected. The white eagles in the outer border are thought by Winston to refer to Piers Gaveston, who, though somewhat under a cloud in 1306, yet, as the friend of the heir to the throne, was a good person to keep in favour with. It is true the Gaveston eagles were golden, but heraldry was more free and easy then than later. There is a portrait of Prince Edward in the Chapter-House with a white falcon on his wrist, and white falcons are plentiful in the windows of the nave, yet I have never heard of his using it as a badge, though the last Plantagenet, Richard II., did so.

[Sidenote: The Bell-founder's window.]

The next window to this is the famous "Bell-founder's Window," given by Richard Tunnoc, bell-founder of York. In the lower panel of the centre light is his portrait kneeling and presenting a model of the window to an Archbishop, perhaps St. William. The panels on either side represent one, the casting, the other the turning of a bell in a lathe. Bells are everywhere in the window, the canopies are hung with them in rows, the borders are formed of them, but Mr. Westlake's careless remark that all six panels represent the process of bell-making is not true. The upper three are much perished, but one can just see that they tell the story of St. William's return to York, when the welcoming crowds broke down Ouse Bridge, but when, through his intercession, not a life was lost.

[Sidenote: The de la Warde window.]

The third window contains some interesting portraits in its lower panels. The central one is that of an Archbishop of York, as shown by the key in his left hand, holding in his right a model of the nave[14]. On the left is a knight dismounted, holding his horse by the bridle, and behind him the hand of some one out of the picture holds his banner, which the painting, though almost obliterated, still shows to be "vaire" argent and sable. In the opposite panel is a lady standing and behind her, half out of the picture, a man on horseback, doubtless his wife and son. Now the arms on the banner are those of the Barons de la Warde, of whom there were only two, Robert and his son Simon. Robert, who was in the Scotch wars, and in 1306 was steward of the household to Edward I., must have pa.s.sed the greater part of that year in York with the King, who was there preparing for his last expedition against Robert Bruce. He, Robert de la Warde, died next year. His son Simon was Governor of York in 1321, and helped with his forces to defeat Thomas of Lancaster at Boroughbridge. It will thus be seen that the window might either have been given by the father in 1306 or the son about 1320, but since two figures are represented, and since we know that Simon died childless (the barony becoming extinct), it seems probable that it was executed in the father's lifetime.

Again, though 1320 would fit the Bell-founder's window, since Tunnoc was Sheriff of York that year, it cannot be made to fit the facts in Peter de Dene's window, which is certainly not earlier but later. The presence of the Templar is against it, as it is unthinkable that the Order which was suppressed in 1312 (and its grandmaster burnt) should thus have been complimented in 1320. But for this fact I am bound to say I should have thought 1320 the more probable.

If then we accept 1306 as the approximate date for these windows, it will be seen that in little more than seven years a complete change had come over the design of English stained gla.s.s, and it will presently be seen that much the same thing was happening in France at the same time. Indeed, one of the surprising things about mediaeval art is the rapidity with which new ideas seem to flash across Europe from Yorks.h.i.+re to Dalmatia.

The outer lights of the de la Warde window have a fascinating border of monkeys bearing pitchers, and across the bottom of the window is a busy scene of monkeys hunting and feasting, with a man and woman among them.

[Sidenote: The fifth window in the north aisle.]

The three lower panels of the fifth window ill.u.s.trate a story which I have never yet found any one to give me a clue to. It has nothing to do with the upper subjects, two of which are the martyrdoms of SS.

Peter and Paul, the third being merely fragments. From its position, and from the fact that the costume is contemporary with the painting, I should rather imagine that it refers to some local story, perhaps connected in some way with the gift of the window. On the right, a figure in a red cope with a red skull-cap but no nimbus, holding a scourge or "disciplina" in his hand, is pointing apparently in denunciation at what appears to be a cringing figure in brown, much broken, among a crowd of others, some of whom are women. In the next panel, which is also much broken and jumbled, the same figures seem to be there, but the one in red seems to be exhorting rather than denouncing. The third or left-hand panel is in much better condition, and here we see the figures plainly. The one in brown, which turns out to be that of a layman, without armour, but with a dagger at his side and a spiked mace slung over his left arm, is kneeling at the feet of the figure in red, who is seated, and with one hand laid on the penitent's head is with the other firmly administering the "disciplina" to his back! The border is of monks (or canons) in their stalls, and the only heraldry in the window is contained in the painted diaper on the blue background, and consists of spread eagles and rampant lions, like the border of the Peter de Dene window. The remains of the donor's name--W ... MN ... CTON--gives me no clue.

[Sidenote: The south aisle.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE x.x.xII WINDOW IN ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHAPEL, ST. OUEN, ROUEN Fourteenth Century]

[Sidenote: The de Mauley window.]

The first five windows in the south aisle seem to me to follow these immediately in order of execution. The style is just a little more advanced; stain is used more freely, and the canopies begin to grow up into the white panel above them until their pinnacles reach its centre and do away with the coloured boss there altogether; they spread into the borders in many cases in order to give more room to the figures under them, thus giving rise to the three-gabled form of canopy. In colour they are still very beautiful, but have suffered much more damage than those in the north aisle. Several of them have been repaired and restored by Peckitt, of York, as the inscriptions show, at the end of the eighteenth century, but Peckitt's restoration was merciful compared to that which the fourth one has undergone at the hands of a modern firm of stained-gla.s.s manufacturers. Whole quant.i.ties of the old gla.s.s have been replaced by new, and the whole has been smeared with some brownish mess to make it look old again. As a result, all life and beauty have gone out of the window which is merely a sort of embalmed corpse, and this is the more to be regretted that it seems to have been a particularly interesting window. The lower panels each contain a pair of kneeling figures, five knights, and one churchman who hold aloft s.h.i.+elds which show them to be various members of the Yorks.h.i.+re family of de Mauley of Mulgrave.

The founder of the family was the Poitevin ruffian, Piers de Mauley who, at King John's orders, murdered Prince Arthur and was rewarded for this service with the hand and estates of an unfortunate Yorks.h.i.+re heiress. The descendants of this miscreant seem, however, to have been gallant soldiers who distinguished themselves in Scotland and Gascony and were made barons by Edward I. A peculiarity of the family was that the eldest son was always called Peter, and they distinguished themselves by numbers, like kings. One of the portraits must be the particular Peter who afterwards, in 1346, commanded the forces which Queen Philippa raised in her husband's absence against the invading Scots, whom he routed at Neville's Cross, taking their king, David Bruce, prisoner, and partly avenging Bannockburn. An interesting point of heraldry is the way in which the arms of the different sons are distinguished, not by the marks of cadency used later, but by the addition of different charges to the original s.h.i.+eld which is or, a bend sable.

The fifth window was once a Tree of Jesse but is now a mere wreck. It is, however, the earliest Jesse Tree I know of in which the stem and foliage of the tree are green.

These windows show a progressive increase in the use of white for flesh colour instead of the brownish pink formerly used. At first, white is used only for women's faces, and then for those of saints of both s.e.xes, brown-pink continuing to be used for other people till quite the middle of the century or later. Stain is not used on the hair at first, but sometimes a thin brown matt of enamel is laid all over the hair which at a distance has almost the effect of stain.

[Sidenote: The sixth window in the north aisle.]

The sixth window on the north side is, I think, a good many years later in date than these ten windows we have been considering, and is much less beautiful. A canopy and border from it are shown in Plate XVIII.a on the right. Although the same general arrangement is adhered to as in the other windows, the treatment is much coa.r.s.er; the crockets of the canopies are big, heavy, and ugly, of a brownish-yellow pot-metal, but at the same time stain is freely, indeed lavishly, used, not only in the canopies and borders but, for the first time in the Cathedral, in the quarries of the grisaille as well. The borders of heraldry or little figures have given way to running patterns of natural foliage of the more common fourteenth century type. There are four different patterns of these borders in the window, so that some probably came from another window of the same date, perhaps in the now empty seventh window.

[Sidenote: The west windows.]

Later still are the three west windows and the sixth in the south aisle which mark a further stage in development. Here we have at last a definite date to help us, for the contract with the glazier, one Robert, is still in existence and is dated 1338, so we may a.s.sume the windows were finished about 1340. It is difficult to judge these windows fairly, for they were subjected to a most drastic restoration in the eighteenth century, and the great central one is further disfigured by protective quarry glazing on the outside, which reduces it to a dirty brown. I do not think, however, that they can ever have been, comparatively speaking, very good, and I am inclined to look upon them as perhaps the poorest work of the Middle Ages. Plate XIX.

shows one light of the northernmost of the three, that at the west end of the north aisle. It will be seen that the canopy has now grown to an absurd height and fills the whole light, and neither in its proportions nor in its details is it very graceful. The border is now growing narrower and narrower, and is eventually doomed to disappear altogether. The crockets of the gable are the only yellow pot-metal used, silver stain being used everywhere else, and not very artistically, though how far this is due to the restorer it is difficult to say.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE x.x.xIII DETAILS, FROM ST. OUEN, ROUEN Fourteenth Century]

The same qualities may be observed in the great central west window of the nave, also the work of the glazier Robert. Here, too, the canopies over the various rows of figures which form the design meet the feet of the row above, and in the top row shoot up to the head of the light. Their stiff awkwardness is in curious contrast to the wonderful flowing grace of the actual tracery of the window which contains them.

The treatment of the figures, too, is dull. For the eight archbishops who form the bottom row, only two different patterns have been used, and in the row above the eleven apostles have been got into eight lights by making six of them squeeze, most uncomfortably, two in a niche.

The St. Stephen (Plate XX.) is from the sixth window in the south aisle, which seems to be of about the same date as the west windows and probably by the same glazier Robert. Instead of conforming to the design of the other windows in the aisle, he has filled it with three figures larger than life under tall canopies. It has likewise suffered much from eighteenth century restoration (the head, I think, is new), and has, besides, the same faults as the west windows. To me its chief interest is in the ornamentation of the saints' dalmatic, which affords the earliest example I know of the use of silver stain on blue gla.s.s, which may be seen in the ring-like ornaments on the blue stripes.

[Sidenote: All Saints', North Street, and St. Martin's, Micklegate.]

The parish churches of York contain a good deal of fourteenth as well as fifteenth century gla.s.s. The windows in the west end of the north aisle of All Saints', North Street, and the south aisle of St.

Martin's, Micklegate, Plates XXI. and XXII., are not very easy to place with regard to the Cathedral work. My own opinion is that they are rather later and show a recovery in quality. The canopies are as big as ever, but there is more taste and refinement in the drawing, both of the figures and ornaments, and more experience as well as taste in the use of the silver stain. At the same time, they contain later features, such as the attempt at perspective in the battlements above the canopy in Plate XXI., and in the brackets of a sort of balcony (not shown in the ill.u.s.tration) below. The curious device above the canopy in the window at St. Martin's (Plate XXII.) is, I imagine, the "merchant's mark" of the donor.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] From the east.

[14] In 1306 this would be William de Greenfield, under whom the nave was building, and in 1320 William de Melton, who finished it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE x.x.xIV CANOPY, FROM ALL SAINTS', NORTH STREET, YORK Fifteenth Century]

XI

FOURTEENTH CENTURY GLa.s.s IN FRANCE

[Sidenote: St. Pierre at Chartres.]

In France the change of style seems to have occurred very much at the same time as in England. There is some transitional work in St. Urbain at Troyes, to which Viollet-le-Duc gives the date 1295. This would make it a few years earlier in all probability than the Chapter-House at York, but the type of grisaille is rather earlier too, still consisting partly, like that at Exeter, of conventional foliage. The clerestory windows of the fine church of St. Pierre at Chartres, whatever their precise date, certainly mark the local change from the previous style.

The church had been begun as early as 1150, but its progress was slow and it was not completed till 1225, though the choir had been glazed in 1172.[15] The upper part of this choir was, however, pulled down in 1270, and rebuilt with large traceried windows, filling all the wall s.p.a.ce of the clerestory. This again was not finished till 1310, but this date probably refers to the completion of the interior decoration which was always preceded by the glazing of the windows. On the whole, I think it is fairly safe to conclude that the choir windows were done about 1300, or a little before.

The style is still that of the First Period but modified, experimentally as it were, to suit new conditions. Each window has four tall narrow lights with tracery above, and every other light is filled with two large figures placed one above the other each in a medallion, which is squeezed by the narrowness of the light into an elongated form, while the s.p.a.ce between the medallions is filled in the old way with mosaic diaper of red and blue. In compliance, however, with the growing demand for more light in churches, the other two lights in each window are filled entirely with grisaille. This would give a lop-sided appearance to a single window, but seen together with only a slender shaft between window and window, they form a succession of alternate white and coloured vertical stripes all round the choir, an interesting and almost unique method of combining figure and grisaille. Altogether the clerestory windows may be considered as the very last work of the First Period already modified and influenced by the spirit of change that was in the air.

In the clerestory windows of the nave the change has already come about. Although in the richness of colouring there is still a reminiscence of the earlier style, yet the medallion has vanished, and everywhere, both over single figures and over subject panels, we find decorated canopies, not yet, however, of exaggerated proportions, and with a complete absence of yellow stain. In the general arrangement the same idea is seen as in the choir, but it has had to be adapted to a different form of window-opening. The nave is part of the original church of 1225, and the clerestory windows consist, like those of the Cathedral, of broad lights grouped in pairs, with a rose above each pair--the germ of tracery. Every alternate pair is entirely filled with small coloured scenes from the life of a saint,--no longer in medallions, but each framed under a small white canopy,--but the windows between them have only a vertical stripe of colour down the centre of each light containing two large figures, one above the other, while the rest of the light is filled with grisaille (Plate XXIII.).

The portrait of a certain abbot as donor enables us to date these nave windows with fair accuracy as about 1307-8, which makes them slightly later than the Peter de Dene window in York Minster. The grisaille is, however, of a distinctly earlier type, having the background still cross-hatched, but at Chartres one would expect the old traditions to die hard.

[Sidenote: Fourteenth century gla.s.s in Chartres Cathedral.]

There is fourteenth century work in the Cathedral, which is interesting in its way. The window given, about 1307-10, by "Geoffrey the Restorer," a canon whose "restoration" of the thirteenth century windows was of a different kind to that now in vogue, is the work of an archaeologist and an enthusiast for the older style and can hardly be taken as typical. Very different is the strip of glazing which Canon Thierry got leave, in 1328, to insert in the foot of one of the big thirteenth century windows in the south transept to light an altar he had founded. Even for its date it is remarkable, consisting, as it does, of figures (Canon Thierry kneeling to the Virgin surrounded by saints) executed entirely in white and silver stain, without any coloured gla.s.s, placed directly on a background of white and stain quarries. It is perhaps the first examples of this treatment of figures, and anything more hopelessly out of keeping with the deep and solemn colours above it can hardly be imagined, so that it is difficult to do it justice. An example of _coloured_ figures placed directly on quarries is the Annunciation, which dates from 1350, in the south choir aisle, but it is not a very interesting group. The chapel of St. Piat contains some gla.s.s of the latter half of the century, but the treatment it has received prevents one forming an opinion of it.

[Sidenote: Evreux.]

The Cathedral of Evreux is rich in remains of fourteenth century gla.s.s, which, like that at York, ill.u.s.trates the progress of design during the century, the windows being of all dates from the opening of the fourteenth century till well on in the fifteenth. The earliest are those in the choir chapels, some of which are of about the same date as the Merton College gla.s.s, which, indeed, they at once call to mind.