CHAPTER XIII.

EARLY GRISAILLE.

With grisaille glass begins a new chapter in the history of glass painting, and a most important one--not only because of the beautiful work which was done from the first in white, but also because coloured glass grew, so to speak, always towards the light.

The first coloured windows were intense in colour, rich, and even heavy. The note they struck was deep, solemn, suited to the church and to the times. Neither priest nor parishioner was afraid to sacrifice a certain amount of light. It was the business of a window to shut in those that worshipped from the outer world, and wrap them in mysterious and beautiful gloom. With other days, however, came other ideals. As time went on, and men emerged from the dark ages, the problem of the glazier was how more and more to lighten his glass; until at last white glass predominated, and the question was how to introduce colour into it. Meanwhile the thirteenth century glaziers resorted, where they wanted light, to the use of windows in grisaille, in absolute contrast to the rich picture-glass in the same church.

The model for grisaille design was readily found in the earlier pattern work in plain glazing.

This last never quite went out of use. But already in the thirteenth century, and probably in the twelfth, it began to be supplemented, for the most part, by painting. The exceptionally graceful work at S. Serge, Angers, for example, on this page and the last, is probably not very much later than the year 1200. You can see at a glance how this is only a carrying further of the unpainted work in the same church (page 27) attributed to the thirteenth century. There may be found indeed amidst the plain glazing scraps of painted work; but they never happen to fit, and have pretty certainly found their way into the window in course of repairs. The unpainted window seems to be of greener and more silvery glass than the painted, to which perhaps the cross-hatching gives a rather horny look.

The one way of painting grisaille in the thirteenth century was to trace the design (which of course followed the traditional lines) boldly upon the white glass, and then to cross-hatch the ground, more or less delicately according to the scale of the work and its distance from the eye, as here shown. By this means the pattern was made to stand out clear and light against the background, which had now the value of a tint, only a much more brilliant one than could have been got by a film or wash of colour. Very occasionally a feature, such as the group of four crowns which form the centre of the circle, above, might be emphasised by filling in the ground about them in solid pigment; but that was never done to any large extent. The rule was always to cross-hatch the ground.

With the introduction of colour into grisaille comes always the question as to how much or how little of it there shall be. There is a good deal of Early French work, which, on the face of it, was designed first as a sort of strapwork of interlacing bands in plain glazing, and then further enriched with painted work, not growing from it, except by way of exception. This is seen in the example here given. The painter indulged in slight modifications of detail as he went on. He had a model which he copied more or less throughout the window; but he allowed himself the liberty of playing variations, and he even departed from it at times. By this means he adapted himself to the glass, which did not always take just the same lines, and at the same time he amused himself, and us, more than if he had multiplied one pattern with monotonous precision. His painting was strong enough to keep the leads in countenance; that is to say, his main outlines would be as thick (see opposite) as lead lines.

Patterns such as those on pages 138, 139, and below, from Soissons, Reims, S. Jean-aux-Bois, would make good glazed windows apart from the painting on them. Indeed, the painting is there comparatively insignificant in design. In the Soissons work, in particular, it consists of little more than cross-hatching upon the background, to throw up the interlacing of the glazed bands; for, with the exception of just a touch of colour in the one opposite, these designs are executed entirely in white glass. The geometric glazing shapes so completely convey the design, that the painted detail might almost be an after-thought.

In much of the earliest grisaille there is absolutely no colour but the greenish hue belonging to what we are agreed to call white glass, and the effect of it is invariably so satisfactory as to show that colour is by no means indispensable. And, at all events in France, the colour was at first very sparingly used, except in those twelfth century patterns (pages 35, 118, 120) which cannot fairly be called grisaille. In the window on page 137 the colour is, practically speaking, enclosed in small spaces ingeniously contrived between the interlacing bands of white; in that on page 138 it is introduced in half rings, which form part of the marginal line, and in spots or jewels; but in either case there is little of it, and it is most judiciously introduced. The interlacing of bands of plain white upon a ground of cross-hatching, itself enriched with scrollwork clear upon it, is characteristically French. Similar bands of white occur, though not interlacing, in the comparatively clumsy panel from Lincoln (above), but the more usual English way was to make the bands of white broader, and to paint a pattern upon them, as in the lancet from Water Perry, Oxfordshire (opposite), or in the much more satisfactory light from Lincoln (overleaf), leaving only a margin of clear glass next the cross-hatched background. A similar kind of thing occurs in the church of S. Pierre at Chartres (below). A yet more usual plan with us was to make the strapwork in colour, as at Salisbury. In the patterns on this page the straps do not interlace. In that on page 143 they not only interlace one with the other, but the painted ornament, which now takes the form of more elaborate scrollwork than heretofore, is intertwined with them. This is an extremely good example of Early English grisaille. Altogether Salisbury Cathedral is rich in white glass windows of this period (pages 143, 148, 329, 332).

The grisaille in the clerestory at Bourges is similar to the Salisbury work, but it is not possible to get near enough to it to make careful comparison. The scrollwork on page 143 may be profitably compared with the very unusual white window at S. Jean-aux-Bois (overleaf). There the design consists altogether of scrolls in white upon a cross-hatched ground. It is as if the designer had set out to glaze up a pattern in white upon a white ground, cross-hatched. But it is obvious that, as there is no change of colour, it was no longer necessary always to cut the ornament out of a separate piece of glass from the ground. We find consequently that, wherever it is convenient, a painted line is used to save leading. That, it has been already explained (page 24), was a practice from the first; and it was resorted to more and more. It came in very conveniently in the French windows, in which the design consisted largely of white strapwork. It was adopted in the example from Châlons here given, though it does not appear in the sketch, any more than it does in the glass until you examine it very carefully. However, in the sketches from the great clerestory window from Reims Cathedral (overleaf), and in the smaller one from S. Jean-aux-Bois (facing it), the economy of glazing is easy to perceive; whilst in that from Coutances (page 147) the glazier is already so sparing of his leads that they no longer always follow or define the main lines of the pattern.

In a remarkable window in the choir of Chartres Cathedral (page 150) the design includes interlacing bands both of white and colour, the coloured ones flanked with strips of white; but the white bands are not glazed separately. They are throughout included in the same piece of glass as the cross-hatching, which defines them. This ingenious and very graceful pattern window is still of the thirteenth century, though clearly of much later date than, for example, the windows of S. Jean-aux-Bois, which might indeed almost belong to the twelfth.

In several of the Salisbury windows (pages 148, 386) thin straps of colour are bounded on the outer side by broader bands of white painted with pattern. And here it should be noticed the bands no longer interlace at all; on the contrary, the ornamental forms are superposed one upon the other. This is very markedly the case on page 148. In the centre of the light is a series of circular discs, and at the sides of these a row of zig-zags, which, as it were, disappear behind them, whilst at the edges of the window, again, is an array of segments of smaller circles losing themselves behind these. In such cases, it will be seen, the broad white bands fulfil the very useful purpose of keeping the coloured lines apart, and separating one series of shapes from the other. In this window, as in the narrow light on page 386, where the vesica shape is occupied once more with flowing scrollwork, and as in all but one of the windows on that page, the background of cross-hatching is for the first time omitted, and the pencilled pattern is by so much the less effective. As a rule, patterns traced in mere outline like this belong to a later date; but these windows are certainly of the thirteenth century. It is seldom safe to say that this or that practice belonged exclusively to any one period. The white glass on page 335, almost entirely without paint, might have been executed in the twelfth century, but its border indicates more likely the latter part of the thirteenth. Quite the simplest form of glazing was to lead the glass together in squares or diamonds. These "quarries," as they are called (from the French _carré_) are associated sometimes with rosettes and bands of other pattern work, as at Lincoln (pages 284, 287); but more ordinarily the ornamental part of the window is made up entirely of them. "Quarry" is a term to be remembered. It plays in the next century an important part in the design of windows.

The best-known grisaille windows in England are the famous group of long lancets, ending the north transept of York Minster, which are known by the name of the Five Sisters. You remember the legend about them. The "inimitable Boz" relates it at length in "Nicholas Nickleby"; but it is nonsense, all the same. The story tells how in the reign of Henry the Fourth five maiden ladies worked the designs in embroidery, and sent them abroad to be carried out in glass. But, as it happens, they belong to the latter part of the thirteenth century; they are unmistakably English work; and, what is more, no woman, maiden, wife, or widow, ever had, or could have had, a hand in their design. Their authorship is written on the face of them. Every line in their composition shows them to be the work of a strong man, and a practical glazier, who worked according to the traditions that had come down to him. A designer recognises in it a man who knew his trade, and knew it thoroughly. The notion that any glazier ever worked from an embroidered design is too absurd. As well might the needlewoman go to the glazier to design her stitchery. But such is the popular ignorance of workmanship, and of its intimate connection with design, that no doubt the vergers will go on repeating their apocryphal tale as long as vergers continue to fill the office of personal conductors.

The Five Sisters are rather looser and freer in design than the Salisbury glass, and have broad borders of white. In detail they are certainly not superior to that, nor in general design, so far as one can make it out at all; but, from their very size and position, they produce a much more imposing effect. Whoever is not impressed by the Five Sisters is not likely ever to be moved by grisaille. They form one huge fivefold screen of silvery glass. The patterns are only with great difficulty to be deciphered. It is with these as with many others of the most fascinating windows in grisaille; the glass is corroded on the surface, black with the dirt and lichen of ages, cracked and crossed with leads introduced by the repairing glazier, until the design is about as intelligible as would be a conglomeration of huge spiders' webs. But, for all that, nay, partly because of it, it is a thing of absolute beauty, as beautiful as a spider's web, beaded with dewdrops, glistening in the sun on a frosty winter's morning. It is a dream of silvery light: who cares for details of design? But it is all this, because it was designed, because it was planned by a glazier for glazing, and has all that gives glass its charm.

Stained glass, like the men who design it, has always the defects of its qualities. It is the first business of those who work in it to see that it has at least the qualities of its defects.