Windows: A Book About Stained & Painted Glass

Leads were not used unless they were constructionally unavoidable; and it was sought to avoid them. The nimbus, for example, was glazed in one piece with the head (page 189), stained perhaps, or with a pattern in stain upon it, to distinguish it from the face; or it showed white against the yellow hair.

From the lead lines alone of an Early window, and of many a Decorated one, you could read the design quite plainly. The later the period the less that is so. By the end of the fifteenth century the lead lines convey very often little or no idea of the picture, which they hold together but no longer outline. Canopies, for example, are sometimes leaded in square quarries, without regard to the drawing, except where that must be (page 342).

A pretty sure sign of period is afforded by the way the leads give, or do not give, the design. Exceptions are mentioned on page 73. Where leads seem to occur more or less as it happens, as though they might have been an after-thought, that is most positive proof of Late work.

Sixteenth Century.

Renaissance glass does not, like Gothic, divide itself into periods. It was at its best when it was still in touch with mediæval tradition.

The finest work in the new manner must be ascribed therefore to the first half of the sixteenth century. After that its merits belong more to picture than to glass.

Apart from details of architecture, ornament (as above), costume and so on, which at once proclaim the style, it is difficult to distinguish between Gothic and Renaissance glass of the very early sixteenth century. The distinction does not in fact exist; for Gothic traditions survive even in work belonging, according to the evidence of its detail, to the Renaissance.

Design.—Design takes now mainly the pictorial direction. It spreads itself more invariably over the whole face of the window. The canopy, for example, is seldom confined to a single light.

Canopies.—The canopy scheme is at first not widely removed from Gothic precedent, although the detail may be pronouncedly Renaissance. It frames the subject as before; but it is less positively white. It is enriched with much more yellow stain; and the mass of white and stain is broken by festoons and wreaths of foliage, fruit, and flowers, medallions with coloured ground, ribbons, or other such features, in pot-metal colour. A simple François Ier canopy is given on page 349.

Sometimes these canopies consist rather of arabesque ornament than of anything that can properly be called architectural, in white and yellow (page 350), or perhaps all in yellow, upon a ground of pot-metal colour (page 205); that is to say, the setting out of the window and the technique employed are absolutely Gothic, and perhaps not even very late Gothic, whilst the detail is altogether Renaissance in design. This mosaic manner (as at Auch) bespeaks, of course, the early years of the Renaissance.

Another sure sign of lingering Gothic influence is where the round arch is fringed with cusping.

The more typically Renaissance form of design is where a huge monumental structure fills the greater part of the window, not canopying a subject, but having in front of it a figure group (Transept of S. Gudule, page 71). The foreground figures stand out in dark relief against the architecture and the sky beyond, seen through the central arch. Into this grey-blue merges very often a distant landscape, painted in great part upon the blue, and really seeming to recede into the distance. The effect of distance is largely obtained by contrast with the strong shadow of the soffits and sides of the arch seen in perspective.

We have here four characteristics of Renaissance glass:—

1. The monumental canopy with figures in front of it.

2. Strong contrast of light and shade.

3. Fairly accurate perspective in the architecture.

4. Something like atmospheric effect in the landscape, which is painted more or less upon the sky.

When in a canopy the shadowed portions of the architecture are glazed in deep-coloured glass (purple, as a rule), and not darkened by painting, it indicates the early part of the century. The canopy, instead of being arched, ends sometimes in a rich frieze and cornice (Church of Brou). When it is in two stages, enclosing two subjects, the lower one has naturally this horizontal entablature (Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, S. Gudule).

A less usual treatment is where the figures do not occupy the foreground, but are seen through the arch. The subject occupies, in fact, very much the position of a painted altar-piece in a carved stone altar.

Foreground figures prove often to be donors and their patron saints. The head of the window above the great architectural canopy, as it is convenient to call it, is usually of plain white glass, glazed in rectangular or diamond quarries (page 71).

A coloured ground above a Renaissance canopy indicates Gothic tradition, and an Early period therefore (S. Jacques, Liège).

More to the latter half of the century belong the pictorial compositions in which architecture, more or less proper to the subject, fills great part of the window, the foremost arches adapting themselves, sometimes, to the stonework. In this case the architecture is in white glass, more or less obscured by painted shadow; and pot-metal colour occurs only in the figures, where it is perhaps quite rich, in occasional columns of coloured marble, and in a peep of pale blue distance seen through some window or other opening (page 213).

Tracery.—In small windows the subject, or its canopy, is often carried up into the tracery lights (page 368), or the architecture ends abruptly and horizontally at the springing of the arch, and the heads of the lights are treated as part of the tracery.

Tracery lights often contain figure subjects. Very commonly they are occupied by figures of angels robed in white and stain, or in rich colour, or with colour only in their wings, playing upon musical instruments, bearing emblems, scrolls, and so on, all on a coloured ground (page 280). There occur also, but less frequently, cherubic heads, portrait medallions, badges, twisted labels, or other devices, upon a ground of ruby, pale blue, purple, or purple-brown. A purple or purplish background is of the period.

Coloured grounds are used without borders. White grounds are usually diapered with clouds.

There is no very distinctive treatment of rose windows. They are filled as pictorially as they well can be. They contain, perhaps, a central subject and in the outer lights angels, cherubs, and the like, much as in other tracery lights.

Ornament.—The detail of their ornament is a ready means of distinguishing Renaissance windows. In place of Gothic leafage we have scrollwork of the marked arabesque or grotesque character derived from Italy. It needs no description.

Screens and draperies have often patterns in white and stain on ruby and other coloured grounds, produced by abrading the red and painting and staining the white thus exposed. The process may be detected by the absence of intervening lead between the white or yellow and the deep ground.

Grisaille windows scarcely occur. The little subjects in white and stain painted upon a single piece of glass, usually circular and framed in quarries or in a cartouche set in plain glazing (page 352), belong to a class by themselves.

Technique.—In many respects the technique of the Renaissance glass painter is only a carrying further of the later Gothic means. He uses more and more white glass, employing it also as a background; he uses more shades of coloured glass, especially pale blues, greens, and purples; he chooses his glass more carefully for specific purposes; he uses more coated glass, and abrades it; he makes greater use of stain, staining upon all manner of colours—ruby, blue, purple, green—and even painting in stain, and picking out high lights upon it in white. He paints delicate work more delicately. Flesh-painting he carries to a very high point of perfection, more especially in the portraits of Donors. In strengthening his shadows he eventually gets them muddy. At first he used to hatch them to get additional strength; eventually he was not careful always so much as to stipple them. He uses often a warmer brown pigment for flesh painting, and by-and-by resorts to a quite reddish tint by way of local colour; he uses large pieces of glass when he can, and glazes his backgrounds and other large surfaces in rectangular panes. Above canopies he comes to use pure white glass, as if to suggest that the canopy is solid, and beyond only atmosphere.

The one quite new departure in sixteenth century technique was the use of enamel colour (see Chapter VIII.). That began to come into use towards the middle of the century. When you detect the least touch of enamel colour in a window, other than the pinkish flesh tint, you may suspect that it belongs to the second half of the century; when it seriously affects the design and colour of the window, you may be sure it does. But it is not until quite the end of the century that mosaic anywhere practically gives way to enamel painting.

The sixteenth century, therefore, includes, broadly speaking, all that is best in Renaissance glass and much that is already on the decline. There is a tide in the affairs of art; and after the full flood of the Renaissance, sweeping all before it, glazing and glass painting sank to the very lowest ebb, out of sight in fact of craftsmanship. Only here and there, by way of rare exception, was good or interesting work any longer done,—as for example at Troyes, where good traditions, piously preserved in a family of exceptionally skilful glass painters, were followed long after they were elsewhere extinct.

Seventeenth Century.

You may recognise seventeenth century work not so much by any new departure in design (except that it aims more and more at the effect of an oil picture, and that the portrait of the Donor and his family constitutes the picture) as by its departure from the old methods, the methods above described; by the introduction of pure white glass, glazed in geometric pattern, in the upper half of the window or, it may be, as a background; by the use of enamel paint instead of coloured glass; by the abuse of heavy shading (in the vain attempt to get chiaroscuro), and by a loss, consequently, of the old translucency and brilliancy; by the aggressiveness of the lead lines (now that it is sought to do as much as possible without them); by the adoption of thin-coloured glass, toned by paint, instead of deep pot-metal; by the occurrence of whole panes of glass coated with solid paint; by the decay of the enamel; and by the general dilapidation of the window.

The data given in this chapter and throughout are derived from the study of old work. Winston and other authorities have been referred to only to corroborate impressions gained by personal experience,—the experience only of a designer, a workman, a lover of glass, professing to no more learning than a student must in the course of study acquire. Nevertheless these few notes on what is characteristic in design and workmanship, may, it is hoped, be helpful to artists, craftsmen, students, and lovers of art, and perhaps sufficient for their guidance.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

STYLE IN MODERN GLASS (A POSTSCRIPT).

It is easy, and it is only too common a thing, for the designer to depend for inspiration over much upon old work; but until he knows what has been done he is not fully equipped for his trade.

Moreover, a workman skilled only in his craft may be prolific in good work: one, on the other hand, learned only in archæology, is, in the nature of things, sterile. He may know as much about old glass as Winston, and fail as utterly even to direct design a-right as he did at Glasgow. The Munich windows there are glaring evidence as to what a learned antiquary and devoted glass-lover can countenance. Too surely the fire of archæological zeal warps a man’s artistic judgment.

What, then, about historic style? Are we to disregard it in our work? That question may be answered by another: What about old work? Old work, it is argued, should be our guide. Well, old work preaches no adherence to past styles. It went its own way, in delightful unconsciousness that the notion could ever occur to any one deliberately to go back to a manner long since out of vogue; and when the idea of a Renaissance did occur to the artist, he very soon made it something quite different from the thing he set out to revive—if ever that was his deliberate intention.

It is too lightly assumed that “the styles” are there, ready made for us, and that all we have to do is to make our choice between them, and take the nearest to a fit we can find. So many of us only learn to copy, whereas the whole use of copying is to learn. Artists study style for information, not authority.

The truth is, no style of old glass is fashioned to our use. Early Gothic glass has most to teach us with regard to the mosaic treatment of the material, and perhaps also about breadth and simplicity of design; but when it comes to figure drawing and painting, here is surely no model for a nineteenth century draughtsman. Renaissance work has most to teach in the way of painting and pictorial treatment; but it is not an exemplar of workmanlike and considerate handling of glass.

Because Early work was badly drawn, because Decorated was ill-proportioned, because Perpendicular was enshrined in stone-suggesting canopy work, because Renaissance was apt to depend too much upon finish, because seventeenth century work was overburdened with paint; must a man, therefore, according to the style of the building for which his work is destined, make it rude, misproportioned, stonelike, ultra-finished, or over-painted?

It happens that Early figure work in glass was mostly in deep rich colour. Are we to have no figures, therefore, in grisaille? It happens that later glass was, at its best, delicate and silvery in effect. Are we, therefore, to have no rich windows any more? Thirteenth century pictures were diminutive in scale. Are we to have no larger pictures ever? Sixteenth century subjects spread themselves over the whole window. Are we never to frame our glass pictures? And as to that frame, are we to choose once and for all the ornamental details of this period or that, or the formula of design adopted at a given time?

Whether in the matter of technique or treatment, of colour or design, no one style of old glass is enough for us. What does an historic style mean? Partly it means that during such and such years such and such forms were in fashion; partly it means that by that time technique had reached such and such a point, and no further. Must we rest there? If at a certain period in the history of design the scope of the glass painter was limited, his art rude, shall we limit ourselves in a like manner? If at another it was debased, ought we to degrade our design, just because the building into which our work is to go is of that date, or pretends to be? It was the merest accident that in the thirteenth century drawing was stiff and design more downright than refined, that the appliances of the glazier were simple, and the technique of the painter imperfect. It was an accident that silver stain was not discovered until towards the middle of the fourteenth century, that the idea of abrading colour-coated glass did not occur to any one until nearly a century later, that the use of the glass-cutter’s diamond is a comparatively modern invention, and so on.

Out of the very scarcity of the craftsman’s means good came; and there is a very necessary lesson to us in that; but to throw away what newer and more perfect means we have (all his knowledge is ours, if we will) is sheer perversity.

To affect a style is practically to adopt the faults and follies of the period. If you are bent upon making your glass look like sixteenth century work, you glaze it in squares, and introduce enamel. To treat it mosaically would be not to make it characteristic enough of the period for your pedant, notwithstanding that sixteenth century glass was, by exception, treated in a glazier-like fashion.

Should one, then, it may be asked, take the exception for model? The answer to that is: take the best, and only the best. It is no concern of the artist whether it be exceptional or of every-day occurrence; some kinds of excellence can never be common. Is it good? That is the question he has to ask himself.

With regard to the use of the forms peculiar to a style—Gothic Tracery or Renaissance Arabesque—that is very much a question of a man’s temperament. Has he any sympathy with them? Does that seem to him the thing worth doing? If his personal bias be that way, who shall say him nay? Assume even that the conditions of the case demand Decorated or Italian detail, it does not follow that they demand precisely the treatment of such detail found in the fourteenth or the sixteenth century.

The style of a building is not to be ignored. To put, nowadays, in a thirteenth or fourteenth century church windows in the style of the fifteenth or sixteenth would be absurd; to put in a fifteenth or sixteenth century church windows in the style of the thirteenth or fourteenth, more foolish still. But it does not follow that in a church of any given century, the modern windows should be as nearly as possible what would have been done in that century.

No man in his senses, no artist at all events, ever denied that the designer of a stained glass window must take into consideration the architecture of the building of which his work is to form part. The only possible question is as to what consideration may be due to it.

The archæologist (and perhaps sometimes the architect) claims too much. Certainly he claims too much when he pretends that the designer of a window should confine himself to the imitation of what has already been done in glass belonging to the period of the building, or of the period which the building affects. Why should the modern designer submit to be shackled by obsolete traditions? What is his sin against art, that he should do this dreary penance, imposed by architectural or ecclesiastical authority? And what good is to come of it?

The unfortunate designer of modern glass is asked to conform both to the technique and to the design of glass such as was executed at the period to which belongs the building where his glass is to go, no matter how inadequate the one or the other, or both, may be. So far as technique is concerned, it can scarcely be questioned that the only rational thing to do, is to do the best that can be done under the circumstances.

That is equally the thing to aim at in design, simply one’s level best. It seems strange that there should be two opinions on the subject. A building of some centuries past (or in that style) is to be filled with nineteenth century glass. Choose your artist: a man whose work has something in common with the sentiment of the period of the building, a man with education enough to appreciate the architecture and what it implies, with modesty enough to think of the decorative purpose of his work and not only of his cleverness; let such a man express himself in his own way, controlled only by the conditions of the case; and there would be little likelihood that his work would, in the result, shock either the feelings or the taste of any but a pedant—and if art is to conform to the taste of the pedant, well, it is time the artist shut up shop. Why will men of learning and research discount, nay, wipe out, the debt art owes to them, by claiming what is not their due?

Even though it were necessary or desirable that we should restrict ourselves to what might have been done in the thirteenth century or in the sixteenth, that would not argue that we must do only what was done. Surely we may be allowed to do what the men of those days might conceivably have done had they possessed our experience. Surely we need not go for inspiration to the glass of a period when glass was admittedly ill-understood, inadequate, poor, bad. It is quite certain that the thirteenth century workmen did not realise all that might be done in painted glass, quite certain that those of the seventeenth did not appreciate what might be done in mosaic glass. It would be sheer folly to paint no better than a thirteenth century glazier, because our window was destined for Salisbury Cathedral, to make no more use of the quality inherent in glass than was made by a painter of the seventeenth century, because it was designed for St. Paul’s. Those who are really familiar with old work know that, even in periods of decline, work was sometimes done which showed no falling away from good tradition. You may find Renaissance glass almost as mosaic in treatment as thirteenth century work. But because that was comparatively rare, because the average work of the period was much less satisfactorily treated, modern Renaissance must, it is absurdly assumed, be on the same unsatisfactory lines.

Suppose we want modern Italian Renaissance, and, further, that we wish not only to retain the character of Renaissance detail but to get good glass, suppose also that we do not want forgery,—the thing to do would be, to inspire oneself at the very best sources of Italian ornament—carving, inlay, goldsmith’s work, embroidery, no matter what (ornament is specifically mentioned because it is in ornament that the tyranny of style is most severely exercised), and to translate the forms thence borrowed into the best glass we can do. That, of course, is not quite so easy as appropriation, wholesale; it implies research, judgment, a thorough knowledge of glass; but it would certainly lead, in capable hands, to nobler work, and work which might yet be in the Italian spirit. The danger is that it would clash, not with Renaissance feeling, but with preconceived ideas as to what should be.

Our affectations of old style would be much more really like old work if they pretended less to be like it. Had the old men lived nowadays they would certainly have done differently from what they did.

An artist in glass cannot safely neglect to study old work, more especially in so far as it bears upon modern practice. It is for him to realise, for example, what artistic good there was in early archaic design, what qualities of colour and so on came of mosaic treatment, what delicacy is due to the liberty of the later Gothic glass painter, what fresh charm there was in the more pictorial manner of the Cinque-Cento, and at what cost was this bought. Questions such as these are much more to the point than considerations of the date at which some new departure may have been made.

The several systems on which a window design was set out, the various methods of execution—mosaic and paint, pot-metal and enamel, smear-shading and stipple, cross-hatching and needle point, matting and diapering, staining and abrading—all these things he has to study, not as indices of period, but that he may realise the intrinsic use and value of each, that he may deduce from ancient practice and personal experience a method of his own.

Doubtful and curious points concern the antiquary not the artist. He had best keep to the broad highway of craftsmanship, not wander off into the byeways of archæology. Typical examples concern him more than rare specimens—examples which mark a stage in the progress of art, and about which there is no possibility of learned dispute. He wants to know what has been done in order to judge what may be done, and especially he wants to know the best that has been done.

The problem is how to produce the best glass we can in harmony with the architecture to which it belongs, but without especial regard to what happens to have been done during the period to which the architecture of the building belongs. We may even inspire ourselves at the sources of sixteenth century Italian art, and yet in no wise follow in the footsteps of the glass painters of the period, who were more or less off the track; we may set ourselves to do, not what they did (glass was not their strong point), but what they might have done. There, if you like, is an ideal worthy of the best of us.

If we pretend to be craftsmen we must do our work in the best way we know. If we are men, let us at least be ourselves. Let us work in the manner natural to us. If we undertake to decorate a building with a style of its own, let us acknowledge our obligation to it; let us be influenced by it so far as to make our work harmonious with it—harmonious, that is to say, in the eyes of an artist, not necessarily of a savant. Evidence of modernity is no sin, but a merit, in modern work. To see how a man adapted his design to circumstances not those of his own day, gives interest to work. We never wander so wide of the old mediæval spirit as when we pretend to be mediæval or play at Gothic. True style, as craftsmen know, consists in the character which comes of accepting quite frankly the conditions inherent in our work.

CHAPTER XXIX.

JESSE WINDOWS.

The subjects depicted in stained glass tell the story of the Church, or preach its doctrine. Scenes from the Old Testament, from the Life of Christ, from the legends of the Saints, and so on, recur from the earliest Gothic times, and throughout the period of the Renaissance. These pictures accommodate themselves to the current plans of design, or the plan of design is chosen to suit them, as the case may be.

There is one subject, however, occurring from the first in glass, which does not fall into any of the usual schemes of design, and which, in fact, differs so entirely from any of them, that it forms a class of design apart. The subject, in fact, by way of exception to the rule, not merely affects but determines the decorative form of the window. This subject is the Descent of Christ—in short, the genealogical tree of the Saviour; and the window devoted to its delineation is called a Jesse window. Much freer and more varied scope for composition was offered by this piece of church heraldry than the ordinary medallion or figure and canopy window afforded, and the glazier turned it early to exceedingly decorative use. The tree is shown issuing, as it were, from the loins of Jesse. It bears his descendants, or rather a very arbitrary selection of them (it is as well not to inquire too strictly as to their legitimate right to be there), ending in the Virgin and the Saviour.

The earliest arrangement of a Jesse window is as follows: at the base is the recumbent figure of Jesse; the straight stem of the tree, proceeding from him, is almost entirely hidden by a string of figures, one above the other, occupying the centre part of the window, and represented, for the most part, as Kings; above them is the Virgin, also crowned; and in the arch of the window sits our Lord in Majesty, surrounded by seven doves, to signify the gifts of the Spirit. It is not perhaps quite clear upon what these figures sit. They hold on with both hands to branches of highly conventional Romanesque foliage, springing from the main stem, and occupying the space about the figures in very ornamental fashion. A series of half medallions on each side of this central design contain little figures of attendant prophets—in a sense, the spiritual ancestors of the Saviour. All this is in the deepest and richest mosaic colour, as in the beautiful bluish Jesse window at the West end of the cathedral at Chartres, which belongs to about the middle of the twelfth century. Very much the same kind of thing occurs at Le Mans and elsewhere.

Later the tree more often branched out into loops, forming oval or vesical-shaped spaces, in which the figures sat, as may be seen on page 362. The ground of the window is in that case blue, the background of the figure ruby. Had it been red the figures would probably have been upon blue. This particular instance, by the way, is said to be of the twelfth century, although the ornament has more the character of thirteenth century work. You see also the doves referred to encircling the figure sitting in Majesty, and the figures attendant upon the Virgin. Sometimes these are prophets, sometimes angels; sometimes they stand in little canopy niches, sometimes they are in the midst of the foliage. The fragment from Salisbury on page 117 formed most probably part of a Jesse window. The symbolic doves have often each a nimbus. A single dove represents, of course, the Holy Ghost.

A rather suggestive variation upon the orthodox Early scheme occurs in a window at Carcassonne. Each of the three lights is bordered with a rather geometric pattern. Within the border the central light is designed much on the usual lines: Jesse recumbent below, and above the figures of Kings, sitting each in his own little vesical-shaped space formed by the growth of the tree. In the sidelights, however, the Prophets are provided with the very simplest canopies, one above the other.

An interesting arrangement is to be found in the clerestory of the cathedral at Tours, where the central light of a window has a Tree of Jesse, with the usual oval compartments, corresponding with hexagon-shaped medallions in the two sidelights, in which are depicted scenes presumably appropriate to the subject; it is difficult to make them out with any certainty.

Occasionally what seems at first sight a medallion window resolves itself, as at S. Kunibert, Cologne, into a kind of genealogical tree, enclosing subjects illustrative of the descent of Christ. The rather unusual combination of medallion and vine shown below, also German, is of rather later date.

In the fourteenth century the tree naturally becomes a vine, usually in colour upon a blue or ruby ground, extending beyond the limits of a single light, and crossing not only the mullions, but the borders (which, by the way, often confuse the effect of a Decorated Jesse window). The vine extends also very often into the tracery, where sits the Virgin with the Infant Christ. The figure of our Lord is always, of course, the topmost feature of the tree—in the arms of the Virgin, in the lap of the Father, or sitting in Majesty. A variation upon ordinary practice occurs where the Father supports a crucifix. The figure of Jesse naturally, as at Shrewsbury (page 241), extends across several lights.

Occasionally a figure and canopy window proves to be also a Jesse window—a vine, that is to say, winds about the figures, and connects them with the figure of Jesse; but this combination of canopy work with tree work (as at Wells, some of the detail of which is given overleaf) is confused and confusing. A much happier combination of figures under canopies with tree work occurs in a sixteenth century window at S. Godard, Rouen, which has at the base a series of five figures, above whom spreads the tree, its roots appearing above the head of the central one, who proves to be Jesse.

By the fifteenth century the vine is rather more conventionally treated. It is usually in white and stain upon a coloured ground, or, if the leaves are green, the stems are white and stain. The figures also have more white in their drapery. In the earlier part of the century the main stem branches very often in an angular manner so as to form six-sided bowers for the figures, framing them, perhaps, in a different colour from the general groundwork of the window. Or the various lights of the window may have alternately a blue and a ruby ground. It is rarely that two figures are shown in the width of a single light, either in separate compartments or grouped in one.

That is so in a remarkably fine window in the clerestory of the cathedral at Troyes (three lights of which are shown on page 366), where the figures no longer occupy the centre of the lights, but are scattered about from side to side, balanced in a very satisfactory way by their names writ large upon the background. This characteristic lettering gives not only interesting masses of white or yellow on the ruby ground, but horizontal lines of great value to the composition. In the lower part of the window a separate screen of richest yellow marks off the figure of Jesse, and at the same time distinguishes the Donors, together with their family and their armorial bearings, from the merely scriptural part of the design. In earlier windows, it should have been stated, prominence is sometimes given to the really more important personages by drawing them to a much larger scale, or by showing them full-length when the others are only half-length, or by draping them all in white and stain, whilst the rest are in colours not so strongly relieved against the ground.

There are two other rather unusual Jesse windows at Troyes, both of Late Gothic period. The one is at S. Nizier: there the foliage is so rare as to give the effect almost of a leafless scroll. The other is at S. Nicholas: there the tree grows through into the tracery, where it appears no longer, as in the lights below, upon a deep blue ground, but upon yellow, the radiance, as it proves, from the group of the Trinity, into which the tree eventually blossoms.

Quite one of the most beautiful Jesse trees that exist is in a Late Gothic window at Alençon. It is unusual, probably unique in design. The figures, with the exception of Jesse, are confined to the upper lights and tracery, forming a double row towards the top of the window. This leaves a large amount of space for the tree, a fine, fat, Gothic scroll, foliated more after the manner of oak than acanthus leaves, all in rich greens (yellowish, apple, emerald-like) on a greyish-blue ground. It forms a splendid patch of cool colour, contrasting in the most beautiful way with the figures, draped mostly in purple, red, and yellow. The figures issue from great flower-like features as big as the width of the light allows, mostly of red, or purple, or white, with a calyx in green. The Virgin issues from a white flower suggestive of the lily. In the window shown on page 368 the tree blossoms also into a topmost lily supporting the Madonna. A characteristic feature about the Alençon window is, the absence of symmetry in its scheme. Of the eight lights which go to make up its width, only three are devoted, below the springing of the great arch over it, to the Jesse tree. Three others contain a representation of the death of the Virgin, under a separate canopy, and in the two outermost lights are separate subjects on a smaller scale. This kind of eccentricity of composition is by no means unusual. A Jesse window very often occupies only one half or one quarter of a large Late Gothic window. And the strange thing is that the effect is invariably satisfactory, often delightful. You do not miss the symmetry, but enjoy the accidental variety of colour.

In sixteenth century work, and even before that, you meet with windows in which figures are in colours upon a white ground. In that case the tree is usually painted upon the white and stained. So it was in the beautiful Flemish window, parts of which are now dispersed over the East windows of S. George’s, Hanover Square, calculated, there, rather to mystify the student of design. In it the grapes, it will be seen (page 216), are glazed in purple pot-metal colour. In the present condition of the window, now that the enamel-brown has partly peeled off, the grape bunches scarcely seem to belong to the rather ghostly vine behind them. That is a misfortune which not uncommonly happens where reliance has been placed upon delicate painting; but for all that this is noble glass, and the figures, as was also not uncommon at the period, are designed with great dignity.

There is distinction, again, in the drawing of the figures in the Jesse at S. Etienne, Beauvais, shown on page 368. That is a splendid specimen of characteristically Renaissance work. Jesse is honoured by a rich canopy of white and stain, which allows of a deep purple background separating him from his descendants. These appear as demi-figures, very richly robed, in strong relief against a pale purplish-blue ground of the atmospheric quality peculiar to the period. The vase-shaped flowers whence they issue are also in rich colour, dark against the ground, as are the variegated fruits and green leaves of the tree, but its branches are of silvery-white, suggesting of birch-bark. This tree-trunk is altogether too realistically treated for the ornamental leafage and still more arbitrary flowers growing from it; but it is a marvellously fine window, masterly in drawing and perfectly painted. And it owes positively nothing to age or accident. Indeed, the effect is somewhat diluted by restoration. Even on the reduced scale of the illustration given, you can detect in the head of the hatless figure to the right a touch of modern French character; and the fine colour of it all is fine in spite of the flatness of tint in the background, for which the nineteenth century must be held responsible.

Except for the confusion caused by the occasional introduction of canopies and borders, a Jesse window may be usually recognised at a glance. In the cathedral at Troyes, however, is what might be mistaken, at first sight, for a Jesse tree. But the recumbent figure is not that of Jesse, but of Christ. He lies, in fact, in the wine press, whence grows a vine bearing half effigies of the Twelve Apostles, and the patron saints of the Donor and his wife, who themselves had places in the lower portion of the sidelights, but the figure of the wife is now missing. The general design and effect of this window, and especially the seriousness of the ornamental portion of it, are such as almost to belie the period of its execution. It is an exceptionally fine window for the year 1625.

This same subject is anticipated in a sixteenth century window (1552) at Conches. There the Saviour treads the blue grapes, and a stream of blood-red wine issues from them. The frame of the press immediately behind him is designed to suggest the cross.

The Jesse window referred to in the north transept at Carcassonne is balanced by a window on the south, which is of peculiarly interesting design, not, to my knowledge, elsewhere to be found in glass, although it occurs in Early Italian painting. It represents the Tree of Life, of Knowledge of Good and Evil—which knowledge appears to be inscribed all over it and the window. It might almost be described as a tree of lettering, for it bears upon its branches (which are labels) and upon its fruit (which are heart-shaped tablets) voluminous inscriptions, not, in the present state of the glass, always easy to decipher, but most effectively decorative. On either side the window, by way of border to the outer lights, is a series of little figures, prophets, or whoever they may be, bearing other inscribed scrolls, mingling with the boughs of the tree, the leaves of which form, as it were, a kind of green and yellow fringe to the inscribed white branches. At the foot of the tree stand Adam and Eve, in the act of yielding to the temptation of the woman-headed serpent coiled round its trunk, and beyond are shown the Ark of Noah and the Ark of the Covenant. Amidst the upper branches is a crucifix, the narrow red cross so inconspicuous that the Christ seems almost to hang upon the tree, and at its summit is the emblem of the pelican, Qui sanguine pascit alumnos. This is altogether not only a striking, and, at the same time, most satisfactory window, but an admirable instance of the use of lettering in ornament. Lettering is very often introduced into Jesse windows, and forms sometimes a conspicuous feature in them: how much more use might be made of it is suggested by this Tree of Life.

CHAPTER XXX.

STORY WINDOWS.

There is something very interesting in the simple heartedness with which the mediæval artist would attack a subject quite impossible of artistic realisation, apart from his modest powers of draughtsmanship, or the limitations of glass.