CHAPTER XXXII.

WINDOWS WORTH SEEING.

The course of the glass hunter seems never yet to have been clearly mapped out for him. Nor can he depend upon those who pretend to direct his steps. The enthusiastic description of the monograph proves in the event to have very likely no warrant of art; the paragraph in the guide-book is so cold as to excite no spark of curiosity about what may be worth every effort to see. Between the two a beginner stands uncertain which way to turn, and as often as not goes astray.

The question which perplexes him on the very outskirts of the subject is: Which are the windows to see? That depends. Some there are which every one who cares at all about glass should certainly see, some which the student who really wants to know should study, some which the artist should see, if merely for the satisfaction of his colour sense. To enumerate only a single class of these would be to write a catalogue; but catalogues are hard reading; the more interesting and more helpful course will be, to tell shortly of some of the windows best worth seeing, and why they should be seen. And if choice be made of instances typical enough to illustrate the history of glass, the list may serve as an itinerary to such as may think it worth while to study it, as it should be studied, not in books, but in churches.

Churches favourable to the study of Early glass in England are not very many. A series of thirteenth century windows is rare; and good examples, such as the fragments from the S. Chapelle, at South Kensington, are few and far between. The one fine series of medallion windows is at Canterbury Cathedral, in the round-headed lights of the choir. In the clerestory also is some figure work, on a larger scale, but less admirable of its kind. For good thirteenth century grisaille in any considerable quantity one must go to Salisbury, where, fortunately, the aisle windows are near enough to the eye to show the very characteristic patterns of the glass. To sit there in the nave and wait until service is over, is no hardship even to the most ardent glass hunter. The silvery light from the windows facing him at the East end of the aisles is solace and delight enough. Yet more enchanting is the pale beauty of the Five slim Sisters, in the North transept of York Minster; that, however, is gained, to some extent, by the confusion of the pattern, which is not quite typically Early, but begins to show symptoms of a transition stage in design.

To appreciate at its full value the stronger colour of the Early mosaic glass one must cross the Channel. We have nothing in this country to compare in quantity, and therefore for effect, with the gorgeous glass illuminating the great French churches. Reims, for example, Bourges, Le Mans, are perfect treasure houses of jewelled light. But richer than all is Chartres. The windows there are less conveniently placed for study than at Le Mans, but they are grander, and more in number. At Reims the art is coarser, though the magnificence of certain red windows there lives in the memory. Emphatically Chartres is the place to know and appreciate thirteenth century glass. No other great church of the period retains so much of its original glazing; and since it is one of the largest, and the glass is very much of one period, it follows that no church contains so much Early glass. The impression it produces is the more pronounced that there is little else. Except for a modern window or two, one Late Gothic window, and some four or five lights of grisaille, which belong to the second period, the glass throughout this vast building is typically Early. It is well worth a pilgrimage to Chartres only to see it. You may wander about the church for hours at a time, unravelling the patterns of the windows, and puzzling out the subjects of the medallion pictures. To sit there in more restful mood upon some summer afternoon, when the light is softened by a gentle fall of rain, is to be thrilled by the beauty of it all. It is as though, in a dream, you found yourself in some huge cavern, lit only by the light of jewels, myriads of them gleaming darkly through the gloom. It is difficult to imagine anything more mysterious, solemn, or impressive. Yes, Chartres is the place in which to be penetrated by the spirit of Early mediæval glass. There is a story told of a child sitting for the first time in his life in some French church, awed by the great Rose window facing him, when all at once the organ burst into music; and it seemed to him, he said, as if the window spoke. Words could not better express than that the powerful impression of Early mosaic glass, the solemnity of its beauty, the way it belongs to the grandeur of the great church, the something deep in us vibrating in answer to it.

Exceptionally interesting Early glass is to be found in the cathedral of Poitiers; but it is hurt by the white light from other windows. In the case of Early coloured windows it is more than ever true that their intensity can only be appreciated when all the light in the building comes through them. That intensity, as was said, is deepened where, as at Strassburg, the colour of the walls absorbs instead of reflecting light. There the red sandstone of which the church is built gives back so little light that, as you enter the door, you step from sunshine into twilight, in which the glass shines doubly glorious. Some of these (certain of the Kings, for example, on the north side of the nave, each with its huge nimbus eddying, as it were, ring by ring of colour, out to the margin of the niche) are of the thirteenth if not of the twelfth century; but they are typical of no period. The borders framing them are perhaps a century later than the figures. Indeed, the period of this glass is most perplexing to the student of style, until he realises that, after the great fire at the very end of the thirteenth century, remains of earlier glass, spared from the wreck, were incorporated with the newer work. And, not only this, but, what was rare in mediæval days, the fourteenth century designer, in his endeavour to harmonise, as he most successfully did, the old work with the new, gave to his own work a character which was not of his period,--much to the mystification of the student, who too readily imagines that he cannot go far wrong in attributing to the glass in a church a date posterior to its construction.

The cathedral at Strassburg is rich also in distinctly Decorated glass, to all of which the tourist pays no heed. He goes there to see the clock. If he should have a quarter of an hour to spare before noon--at which hour the cock crows and the church is shut--he allows himself to be driven by the verger, with the rest of the crowd, into the transept, and penned up there until the silly performance begins. To hear folk talk of the thing afterwards at the _table d'hôte_ you might fancy that Erwin Von Steinbach had built his masterpiece just to house this rickety piece of mock old mechanism.

Some of the most interesting glass of the Middle Gothic period is to be found in Germany, for tradition died hard there; and, whilst thirteenth century glass was more often Romanesque than Gothic in character, that of the fourteenth often followed closely the traditions of earlier Gothic workmanship. The Germans excelled especially in foliage design, which they treated in a manner of their own. It was neither very deep in colour nor grisaille, but midway between the two. The glass at Regensburg is an exceedingly good instance of this treatment; but instances of it are to be found also in the Museum at Munich, very conveniently placed for the purposes of study. The windows at Freiburg in the Black Forest should also be seen. But some of the very richest figure work of the period is to be found in the choir windows of S. Sebald's Church, at Nuremberg. Except for the simplicity of their lines these are not striking in design; but the colour is perhaps deeper in tone than in the very richest of thirteenth century glass. The first impression is that the composition is entirely devoid of white glass; but there proves to be a very small amount of horny-tinted material which may be supposed to answer to that description. As the light fades towards evening these windows become dull and heavy; but on a bright day the intensity of their richness is unsurpassed. They have a quality which one associates rather with velvet than with glass.

Excellent Decorated glass, and a great quantity of it, is to be found at Evreux, and again at Troyes. The clerestory of the choir at Tours is most completely furnished with rich Early Decorated glass of transitional character--interesting on that account, and, at the same time, most beautiful to see. There is other Decorated work there with which it is convenient to compare it, together with earlier and later work more or less worth seeing. Again most interesting work, but not much of it, and that rather fragmentary, is to be found at the church of S. Radegonde, at Poitiers; but there was in France at about that time rather a lull in glass painting. In England, on the contrary, there is an abundance of it. There is good work in the choir of Wells Cathedral. Part of it is in a rather fragmentary condition, but it is all very much of a period; and there is enough of it to give a fair idea of what English Decorated glass is like. York Minster is rich in it. It is quite an object lesson in style to go straight from the contemplation of the Five Sisters, which belong to the latter part of the Early period of glass painting, into the neighbouring vestibule of the Chapter House, where the windows are of the early years of the Second Period, and thence to the Chapter House itself, where they are typically Decorated. The study of Decorated glass can be continued in the nave again, which is filled with it. Entering, then, the choir, you find mainly Perpendicular glass, much of it typical of English work of the Late Gothic period.

Other very beautiful Late Gothic work is to be found in some of the smaller churches of York, such as All Saints'. There is a window there made up of fragments of old glass, among which are some very delicately painted and really beautiful heads. This work is all characteristically English. English also is the glass in the Priory Church at Great Malvern. There is a vast quantity of it, too, which adds to its effect; but unfortunately, a great part of it now fills windows for which it was obviously not designed. This is the more unfortunate because, where it has not been disturbed, it shows unmistakable evidence of having been very carefully designed for its place. The tracery of the great East window is, for example, an admirable instance of the just balance between white and colour so characteristic of later Gothic glass. Again, the Creation window, amongst others, is a lesson in delicate glass painting.

Distinctly English in the delicacy of their painting are, again, the windows in the church of S. Mary, Ross. The far-famed windows of Fairford are, of course, not English. They were captured, the story goes, at sea, and brought to Gloucestershire, where a Perpendicular church was built to accommodate them. English antiquaries make claim that they are English, but internal evidence shows them to be Flemish or German. Considerable notoriety attaches to the Fairford windows owing to a theory which was at one time propounded to the effect that they were designed by Albert Dürer. The theory is now as dead as a back number, but the notoriety remains--and not undeservedly; for although this glass stands by no means alone, and is distinctly second to some contemporary work (such, for example, as that on the north side of the nave of Cologne Cathedral, which Dürer might conceivably have designed), it is remarkably fine; and it enjoys the comparatively rare distinction of practically filling the windows of the church. You not only, therefore, see the colour (which, rather than the painting, is its charm) at its best, but you have a complete scheme of decoration--Type answering to Anti-type, the Twelve Apostles corresponding to the Prophets, the Evangelists to the Four Fathers, and again the Saints opposed to the Persecutors of the Church. Most old glass owes something to the disintegration of its surface, and the consequent refraction of the light transmitted through it. In the Fairford glass the colours are more than usually mellow. The white, in particular, is stained to every variety of green and grey--the colour, as it proves, of the minute growth of lichen with which it is overgrown. It is said that, when the fury of iconoclasm was abroad, this glass was buried out of harm's way; which may possibly have hastened the decay of the glass, and so have given root-hold for the growth which now glorifies it.

It would not be easy to find finer instances of Late Gothic German work than the five great windows on the North side of Cologne Cathedral. There, too, one has only to turn right-about-face to compare early sixteenth century with nineteenth century German practice, and on precisely the same scale, too. Any one who could hesitate for an instant to choose between them, has everything yet to learn in regard both to glass and to colour. The garish modern transparencies show, by their obvious shortcomings, the consummate accomplishment of the later Gothic glass painters.

There is a very remarkable late Gothic Jesse window in the Lorenz Kirche at Nuremberg, and another almost equal to it in the cathedral at Ulm. The Tree of Jesse is very differently, but certainly not less beautifully, rendered in the fine West window at Alençon.

In most of the great French churches, and in many of the smaller ones, you find good fifteenth century work. At Bourges you have seven four-light windows and one larger one, all fairly typical. The best of them is in the chapel of Jacques Coeur, the Jack that built at Bourges quite one of the most remarkable of mediæval houses extant. But there is no one church which recurs before all others to the memory when one thinks of Late Gothic glass in France. One remembers more readily certain superlative instances, such as the flamboyant Rose window at the West end of S. Maclou, at Rouen, a wonder of rich colour, or the Western Rose in the cathedral there. The fact is, that the spirit of the Renaissance begins early in the sixteenth century to creep into French work; and, as glass painting arrives at its perfection, it betrays very often signs of going over to the new manner. This is peculiarly the case in that part of France which lies just this side of the Alps; so much so, that a markedly mixed style is commonly accepted as "Burgundian." This is most apparent in the beautiful church of Brou, a marvel of fanciful Gothic, florid, of course, after the manner of the Early sixteenth century, extreme in its ornamentation, but, for all but the purist, extremely beautiful. The church itself is as rich as a jewel by Cellini, and infinitely more interesting; and the glass is worthy of its unique setting.

There is a very remarkable series of windows to see in the cathedral at Auch, all of a period, all by one man, filling all the eighteen windows of the choir ambulatory. Transition is everywhere apparent in them, though perhaps one would not have placed them quite so early as 1513, the date ascribed to them. A notable thing about the work is its scale, which is much larger than is usual in French glass of that period. Nowhere will you find windows more simply and largely designed or more broadly treated. Nowhere will you find big Renaissance canopies richer in colour or more interesting in design. The fifty or more rather fantastically associated Prophets, Patriarchs, Sibyls, and Apostles depicted, form, with the architecture about them and the tracery above, quite remarkable compositions of colour. And it is very evident that the colour of each window has been thought out as a whole. There is not one of these windows which is not worth seeing. They form collectively a most important link in the chain of style, without, however, belonging to any marked period. Indeed, they stand rather by themselves as examples of very Early Renaissance work, aiming at broad effects of strong colour (quite opposite from what one rather expects of sixteenth century French work), and reaching it. And though the artist works almost entirely in mosaic--using coloured glass, that is to say, instead of pigment--and depends less than usual upon painting, he yet lays his colour about the window in a remarkably painter-like way.

There are noteworthy windows at Châlons-sur-Marne, in the churches of SS. Madelaine and Joseph, which can be claimed neither as Gothic nor Renaissance, details of each period occurring side by side in the same window. At the church of S. Alpin at Châlons is a series of picture windows in grisaille, not often met with, and very well worth seeing.

Early sixteenth century glass is so abundant that it is hopeless to specify churches. Nowhere is the transition period better represented than at Rouen, and, for that matter, the Early Renaissance too. The church of S. Vincent contains no less than thirteen windows, with subjects biblical or allegorical, but always strikingly rich in colour. The choir is, you may say, an architectural frame to a series of glass pictures second to few of their period, and so nearly all of a period as to give one an excellent impression of it: the brilliancy of the colour, the silveriness of the white glass, and the delicacy of the landscape backgrounds is typical. Scarcely less interesting is the abundant glass in the church of S. Patrice, which carries us well into the middle of the sixteenth century and beyond; so that Rouen is an excellent place in which to study all but Early glass: there is not much of that to speak of there. Two exceptionally fine Renaissance windows are to be found in the church of S. Godard; and there are others well worth seeing whilst you are in Rouen, if not in every case worth going there to see, in the churches of S. Romain, S. Nicaise, S. Vivien, in addition to S. Ouen, S. Maclou, and the cathedral.

Yet finer Renaissance work is to be found at Beauvais--finer, that is to say, in design. One is reminded there sometimes of Raffaelle, who furnished designs for the tapestries for which the town was famous; these may very well have inspired the glass painters; but there is not at Beauvais the quantity of work which one finds at Rouen. The very perfection of workmanship is to be seen also in the windows at Montmorency and Ecouen (both within a very short distance of Paris); but, on the whole, this most interesting glass hardly comes up to what one might imagine it to be from the reproductions in M. Magne's most sumptuous monograph.

In a certain sense also the windows at Conches, in Normandy, are a disappointment. In a series of windows designed by Aldegrever one expects to find abundant ornament; and there is practically none. What little there is, is like enough to his work to be possibly by him; but one feels that Heinrich Aldegrever, if he had had his way, would have lavished upon them a wealth of ornamental detail, which would have made them much more certainly his than, as it is, internal evidence proves them to be. It would hardly have occurred to any one, apart from the name in one of the windows, to attribute them to this greatest ornamentist among the Little Masters. It is only the ornamentist who is disappointed, however, not the glass hunter. It is an experience to have visited a church like Conches, simple, well proportioned, dignified; where, as you enter from the West (and the few modern windows are hidden), you see one expanse of good glass, of a good period, not much hurt by restoration. The effect is singularly one. You come away not remembering so much the glass, or any particular window, as the satisfactory impression of it all--an impression which inclines you to put down the date of a pilgrimage to Conches as a red-letter day in your glass-hunting experiences.

There is magnificent Renaissance glass in Flanders, and especially at Liège, in which, for the most part, Gothic tradition lingers. Most beautiful is the great window in the South transept of the cathedral. The radiance of the scene in which the Coronation of the Virgin is laid, reminds one of nothing less than a gorgeous golden sunset, which grows more mellow towards evening when the light is low. In the choir of S. Jacques there are no less than five tall three-light windows, by no means so impressive as the glass at the cathedral, but probably only less worthy of study because they have suffered more restoration. The seven long two-light windows at S. Martin, though less well-known, are at least as good as these. In most of them may be seen the decorative use of heraldry as a framework to figure subjects, characteristic of German and Flemish work. Very much of this character is the glass from Herkenrode, which now occupies the seven easternmost windows of the Lady Chapel in Lichfield Cathedral. They are pictorial, but the pictures are glass pictures, depending upon colour for their effect; and they are really admirable specimens of the more glass-like manner of the Early Flemish Renaissance. There is in the three windows at the East end of Hanover Square Church, London, some equally admirable glass, which must once have belonged to a fine Jesse window; but it has suffered too much in its adaptation to its present position to be of great interest to any but those who know something about glass.

All this work is in marked contrast to the not much later Flemish glass at Brussels--the two great transept windows, and those in the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament at S. Gudule, to which reference is made at length in