Chapter VII. They are windows which must be seen. They are at once the

types, and the best examples, of the glass painter's new departure in the direction of light and shade. On the other hand, the large East window at S. Margaret's, Westminster (Dutch, it is said, of about the same date), has not the charm of the period, and must not be taken to represent it fairly.

The brilliant achievements of William of Marseilles at Arezzo, and the extraordinarily rich windows in the Duomo at Florence, have been discussed at some length (pages 248, 268). They should be seen by any one pretending to some acquaintance with what has been done in glass. Other Florentine windows worthy of mention are, the Western Rose at S. Maria Novella, and the great round window over the West door at S. Croce, ascribed to Ghiberti. The transept window in SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice does not come up to its reputation. It is in a miserable condition, and as to its authorship (whence its reputation), you have only to compare it with the S. Augustine picture, which hangs close by, to see that it is not by the same hand. One of the multitudinous Vivarini may very likely have had a hand in it, but certainly not Bartolomeo. His manner, even in his pictures, was more restrained than that. There are a number of fine windows in the nave of Milan Cathedral, two at least in which the composition of red and blue is a joy to see. Earlier Italian glass is of less importance; the windows at Assisi, for example, are interesting rather than remarkable. They show a distinctly Italian rendering of Gothic, which is of course not quite Gothic; but to the designer they indicate trials in design, which might possibly with advantage be carried farther.

By far the most comprehensive series of Renaissance windows in this country is in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. In the matter of dignity and depth of colour, the small amount of rather earlier glass in the outer chapel holds its own; but the thing to see, of course, is the array of windows, twenty-three of them, all of great size, within the choir screen. It flatters national vanity, though it may not show great critical acumen, to ascribe them to English hands. Evidently many hands were employed, some much more expert than others. It seems there is documentary evidence to show that the contracts for them (1516-1526) were undertaken by Englishmen. Very possibly they were executed in England, and even, as it is said they were, in London. That they were not painted by the men who drew them, or even by painters in touch with the draughtsmen, is indicated by such accidents as the yellow-haired, white-faced negro, of pronounced African type, among the adoring Magi. It is as clear that the painter had never seen a black man as that the draughtsman had drawn his Gaspar from the life. Certain of the accessory scroll-bearing figures, which keep, as it were, ornamental guard between the pictures, might possibly have been designed by Holbein, who is reported to have had a hand in the scheme; but they are at least as likely to be the handiwork of men unknown to fame. But, no matter who designed the glass, it is on a grand scale, and largely designed. It is not, however, a model of the fit treatment of glass, though it belongs to the second quarter of the sixteenth century. For the designers have been more than half afraid to use leading enough to bind the glass well together, and have been at quite unnecessary pains to do without lead lines. The windows vary, too, in merit; and they bear evidence, if only in the repetition of sundry stock figures, of haste in production. Still, they have fine qualities of design and colour, and they are, on the whole, glass-like as well as delightful pictures. We have nothing to compare with them in their way.

To see how far pictorial glass painting can be carried, go to Holland. No degree of familiarity with old glass quite prepares one for the kind of thing which has made the humdrum market town of Gouda famous. Imagine a big, bare, empty church with some thirty or more huge windows, mostly of six lights, seldom less than five-and-twenty feet in height, all filled with great glass pictures, some of them filling the whole window, and designed to suggest that you see the scene through the window arch. They do not, of course, quite give that impression, but it is marvellous how near they go to doing it. No wonder the painters have won the applause due to their daring no less than to what they have done. Any one appreciating the qualities of glass, and realising what can best be done in it, is disposed at first to resent the popularity of this scene-painting in glass;--one measures a work naturally by the standard of its fame;--but a workman's very appreciation of technique must, in the end, commend to him this masterly glass painting. For the Crabeth Brothers, their pupils, and coadjutors, were not only artists of wonderful capacity, daring what only great artists can dare, but they had the fortune to live at a time when the traditions of their art had not yet been cast to the winds. Though working during the latter half of the sixteenth century, they were the direct descendants of the men who had raised glass painting to the point of perfection, and they inherited from their forbears much that they could not unlearn. Ambitious as they might be, and impatient of restraint, they could not quite emancipate themselves from the prejudices in which they were brought up. More than a spark of the old fire lay smouldering still in the kiln of the glass painter, and it flared up at Gouda, brilliantly illuminating the declining years of the century, and of the art which may be said to have flickered out after that.

This last expiring effort in glass painting counts for more, in that it is the doing not only of strong men but of men who knew their trade. It is extremely interesting to trace the work of the individual artists employed; which a little book published at Gouda, and translated into most amusing English, enables one to do. Dirk Crabeth's work is pre-eminent for dignity of design, his figures are well composed, and his colour is rich; although in the rendering of architectural interiors he falls into the mud, that is to say, into the prevailing Netherlandish opacity of paint. His brother Walter has not such a heavy hand; he excels in architectural distance, as Dirk does in landscape; and his work is generally bright and sparkling, not so strong as his brother's, but more delicate. Their pupils, too, do them credit, though they lack taste. Among the other more or less known artists who took part in the glass, Lambrecht van Ort distinguishes himself in canopy work, as a painter-architect might be expected to do; Adrian de Vrije and N. Johnson delight also in architecture, Wilhelmus Tibault and Cornelius Clok in landscape. Clok and Tibault compete in colour with the Crabeths, and go beyond them in originality.

Description of this unrivalled collection of later Dutch glass painting, except on the spot, is as hopeless as it would be dull. The windows must be seen. The men were artists and craftsmen, and their work is truly wonderful. Who shall attempt what these men failed to do? That is the moral of it.

The only other place where later glass is of sufficient worth to make it worth seeing, the only place where Seventeenth century work arouses much interest, is Troyes. There is a quantity of it in the churches of S. Nizier, S. Pantaleon, and in the cathedral, attributed, for the most part, to Linard Gontier, who is certainly responsible for some of the best of it. But it is in the church of S. Martin-ès-Vignes, in the outskirts of the town, that it is to be appreciated _en masse_. There you may see some hundred and ten lights in all, executed during the first forty years of the seventeenth century. This is the place to study the decline and fall of glass painting--a melancholy sort of satisfaction. Here more thoroughly than ever must be realised how hopeless it is to evade in glass the glazier's part of the business; how powerless enamel is to produce effect; how weak, poor, lacking in limpidity and lustre, its colour is--and this even in the hands of an artist born, one may say, after his time. Gonthier was an incomparable glass painter. He could produce with a wash of pigment effects which lesser men could only get by laborious stippling and scratching; he could float enamel on to glass with a dexterity which enabled him to get something like colour in it; but he was not a colourist, nor yet, probably, a designer. The difference in the work attributed to him, and the style of his design (which is sometimes that of an earlier and better day) lead one rather to suppose that he adapted or adopted the designs of his predecessors as suited his convenience.

To see what glass painting came to in the eighteenth century you cannot do better than go to Oxford. You have there the design of no less a man than Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted by one of the best china painters of his day. None but a china painter, by the way, could be found to do it. It is not unfair, therefore, to compare this masterpiece of its poor period with the rude work of the fourteenth century, done by no one knows whom. And what do we find? Conspicuous before us is the great West window, which might as well have been painted on linen, so little of the translucency of glass is there left in it. It in no way lessens the credit of the great portrait painter that he knew nothing of the capacities of glass; that was not his _métier_. And there was no one to advise him wisely in the matter. But the result is disastrous. The beauty of his drawing--and there is charm at least in the figures of the Virtues--counts for little, as compared with the dulness of it all. It has neither the colour of mosaic glass nor the sparkle of grisaille. The white is obscured by masses of heavy paint, which, when the sun shines very brightly behind it, kindles at best into a foxy-brown; and even this is in danger of peeling off, and showing the poverty of the glass it was meant to enrich. Any pictorial effect it might have had is ruined by the leads and bars, which assert themselves in the most uncompromising manner. In short, the qualities of oil painting aimed at are altogether missed, and the facilities which glass offered are not so much as sought.

It is no hardship to turn your back upon such poor stuff. And there, high up on the other side, are seven great Gothic windows. These are by no means of the best period. The design consists largely of canopy work, never profoundly interesting; the figures are, at the best, rudely drawn; some of them are even grotesquely awkward. Their heads are too large by half, their hands and feet flattened out in the familiar, childish, mediæval way. In all the sixty-four figures there is not one that can be called beautiful. Yet for all that, there is a dignity in them which the graceful Virtues lack. They are designed, moreover, with a large sense of decoration. The balance of white and colour is just perfect, and the way the patches of deep colour are embedded, as it were, in grisaille, is skilful in the extreme. To compare them with the futile effort of the eighteenth century, opposite, is to apprehend what can be done in glass, and what cannot. The whole secret of the success of the mere craftsman where the great painter failed, is that he knew what to seek in glass,--colour, brilliancy, decorative breadth. He not only knew what to do, but how to do it; and he did it in the manliest and most straightforward way. Rude though the work, it fits its place, fulfils its function, adorns the architecture, gives grandeur to it. What more can you ask?

Domestic glass, such as that in which the Swiss excelled (window panes, many of them, rather than windows), is best studied in museums, whither most of it has drifted. There is no national collection without good examples. Better or more accessible it would be difficult to find than those in the quiet little museum at Lucerne--so quiet that, if you spend a morning there, studying them, you become yourself, by reason of your long stay, an object of interest. So little attention do these masterpieces in miniature glass painting attract, that the guardians do not expect any one to give them more than a passing glance; but they leave you, happily, quite free to pursue your harmless, if inexplicable, bent.

The list of windows worth seeing is by no means exhausted. In many a town, as at York, Tours, Troyes, Evreux, Bourges, Rouen, Nuremberg, Cologne, and in many a single church, you may find the whole course of glass painting, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, more or less completely illustrated; and, where that is so, of course one period throws light upon another. But the impression is always stronger when the century has left its mark upon the church.

Not until you have a clear idea of the characteristics of style, can you sort out for yourself the various specimens, which occur in anything but historic sequence in the churches where they are to be found. Having arrived at understanding enough to do that, you will need no further guidance, and may go a-hunting for yourself. To the glass hunter there are almost everywhere windows worth seeing.