The type of figure.

The figures themselves in contrast to those of the previous period are rather short and ungraceful, but, in the best work at least, very much alive. The quaint nose of which Plate XLII. is an extreme type is curiously universal throughout English work of the time, and was, I suppose, the accepted type of beauty.

Forms used in the ornament.

(4) The Abandonment of Natural Plant Forms in Ornament.—The natural plant forms, which were so universally used in fourteenth century ornament, were abruptly abandoned at the beginning of the fifteenth. Their place is taken, in the diapered backgrounds to the figures, by a curious long serrated leaf, rather like certain kinds of seaweed, which may be seen in Plates XXXVII. and XXXVIII. Borders become less frequent, and when they occur generally consist of a leaf of something the same sort, in white and stain, wrapping round a central stem, sometimes with and sometimes without a coloured background. Later on, the conventional pomegranate pattern is occasionally introduced in vestments and hangings, but it is the exception for coloured garments to be ornamented except with an edging. White garments are sometimes powdered with little devices in yellow stain, as in Plate XXXIX. The edgings to bishops' copes are often of white set with coloured jewels, which are sometimes let into the middle of a piece of glass without its being cut across—a tour de force of glazing very difficult to accomplish and not worth the trouble when done.

(5) Supersession of Other Forms of Grisaille by Regular Quarries.—The "bulged" quarries disappear by the middle of the fourteenth century and the ordinary straight-sided, diamond-shaped quarry is henceforth the rule. By the end of the century the continuous flowing pattern running through them is abandoned also. There had been a tendency towards the end, as may be seen in Plate XXVI., for the pattern to be so disposed that a flower, or other feature, was repeated in the middle of each quarry—in a transitional window at York, which I have referred to elsewhere, there is a continuous pattern with a bird in the centre of each quarry perching upon a branch of it. In the fifteenth century the connecting pattern was left out, and quarries are decorated solely by a little device in the centre of each. Sometimes these are purely conventional, but often they are the occasion for delightful exercise of fancy on the artist's part and form an exception to the general rule of the disuse of natural ornament. Birds, insects, flowers, and leaves are used, as well as heraldic devices and monograms, all expressed very simply in firm pure line work touched with the yellow stain.

The change in material.

Flashed ruby.

(6) The Material used.—At the beginning of the fifteenth century there is a very marked change in the material used. It becomes thinner and flatter—sometimes very thin indeed—and the colour is more even. Thirteenth century "ruby," seen edgeways, reveals itself as composed, for nearly, if not quite, half its thickness, of alternate minute layers of red and white, the rest of the thickness being white. It has been thought that to this is due the wonderful luminous quality of the early ruby. Gradually the number of these layers are reduced till at the beginning of the fifteenth century the red is all concentrated into one layer on the surface. This is the "flashed" glass referred to at the beginning of the book, and one soon begins to find instances of ornament chipped out of it. The lion on the red shield in Plate XXXVI. has, I think, been got in this way, and a later instance may be seen in Plate L. in the girdle of the prophet Hosea on the right.

The rich blues of earlier times are replaced by a more sober greyish blue, which, however, is a very effective colour in glass. The colours are not perfectly flat tints, for there are gradations in them, but the streaky, crumbly quality of the early glass is gone. The craftsman was beginning to rely for quality less on the glass itself than on what he put on it.

XIV
FIFTEENTH CENTURY GLASS
AT YORK

XIV
FIFTEENTH CENTURY GLASS
AT YORK

The very well-defined and distinctive style I have described, which became universal in English fifteenth century work, and which, from the architecture with which it is associated, we call Perpendicular, was not, I think, evolved by the Winchester School, although no doubt they influenced it. Where it began must always be something of a mystery, but some work in the east window of Exeter Cathedral is very suggestive in this connection.

Lyen's work at Exeter.

This window, glazed originally at the beginning of the fourteenth century, was enlarged and rebuilt with Perpendicular tracery in 1390-91 through the munificence of one of the canons, Henry Blakeborn; and in 1392 Robert Lyen, glazier, citizen of Exeter, and master glazier to the Cathedral, was commissioned to adapt the old glass to its new setting, adding what was necessary of his own work to fill the space. Robert Lyen's work is easily to be distinguished from the earlier work (which, besides that of 1302, includes four figures of about 1340-50, which he may have brought from other windows to fill up with). It consists of six figures, of which only three are under canopies of Lyen's time, and of a row, across the bottom, of short double-arched canopies enclosing coats of arms of past bishops of Exeter. The drawing is about equal to that of the Winchester School, but the canopies, with their multitude of crocketted pinnacles in strong outline, are far nearer to the regular Perpendicular type, such as we find at York, than anything that was being done by the Winchester School at that date.

Was the work of Robert Lyen an example of a style which had become general throughout the west, and of which the influence extended as far as Coventry? For in 1405 John Thornton of Coventry was commissioned to fill with stained glass the huge east windows of the new choir of York Minster, and this is the earliest existing window, of which the date is known, in which the Perpendicular style in glass has taken definite form.

The east window of York Minster.

This great window is the glory of English stained glass. It is 78 feet high from top to bottom, and below the great mass of Perpendicular tracery, which fills the mighty pointed arch of it, there are the three tiers of lower lights divided by horizontal transoms, with nine lights in every tier. Each of these lights measures 3 feet 6 inches across, and is divided again by the thick iron frame-bars into roughly square panels, each of which contains a subject from the Bible. The canopy work which, in the hands of a fourteenth century artist, would have filled half the window space with its towering spires, is here reduced to a small many-pinnacled canopy just filling the head of each light (where it would have been an awkward shape for a subject), a narrow shafting forming a border down the side, and a very shallow flat arch dividing each subject from the one above. There has been no question here of eking out a poverty of ideas; on the contrary, the artist's aim seems rather to have been to get as much space as possible for the expression of them.

There are one hundred and seventeen of these subject panels. Thornton would seem to have begun at the top with the idea of telling the whole story of the Old Testament, or perhaps that of the entire Bible, but by the time he had finished the upper tier, which contains three rows of panels, as compared with five in each tier below, and carried the story as far as the death of Absalom, he, or more probably his clients, seem to have changed their minds, for the rest of the window, with the exception of the bottom row panels, is devoted to the illustration of the Apocalypse, beginning with the torture of St. John under Domitian and his banishment to Patmos.

John Thornton was a greater draughtsman than Thomas of Winchester, and the portrayal of these scenes is far in advance, from the pictorial point of view, of anything that had been done in glass up to that time. Here again one feels, as in the best days of the Early Period, that one can take pleasure in the actual technique of the painting, but it is a different technique to that of the Early Period. The line work is still wonderfully precise and expressive, but it is more delicate than before, and is helped by delicate modelling in "matt shading," while the drawing itself is in a much more modern convention. It is, indeed, the first example in stained glass of a style of drawing which was to hold the field in England till nearly the end of the century, and to John Thornton is due, probably, the credit of its introduction.

Its colouring.

As a colourist, however, John Thornton is even greater. This window stands almost alone in England, if not in Europe, for the way in which colour is made use of as a means of expression. Elsewhere in York the successors of John Thornton seem to have been content with a merely decorative distribution of red, blue, and silver stain in their subjects, but here each scene has its appropriate colour scheme, the creation of fishes, for instance, being a lovely harmony of blue and silvery white, while the scenes in Eden are a glory of spring-like greens and gold.

Its con­struction.

The necessary element of strength in the construction of this huge window, which, at Gloucester was, as we have seen, obtained by building the whole window on the plan of a bow, is here provided by doubling the mullions below the second transom. An inner set has been constructed between three and four feet on the inside of those which sustain the glass, being connected with them by little flying arches and so acting as buttresses to them. This double set of mullions carries a gallery along its top at the level of the upper transom, while another runs across the base of the window, and from these it is possible to study the upper and lower tiers of lights at close quarters. Unfortunately access to these galleries is nowadays only granted as a great favour, but for those that can obtain it, it is well worth the trouble, for it is only from this position that the pages of this vast picture-book can be studied, and its story unravelled. Indeed I think the only adverse criticism that can be made of John Thornton's work is to question the artistic wisdom of putting so much beautiful work, on such a small scale,—for the delicate drawing and finish of the work is wonderful,—in a position in which it was invisible to the ordinary observer below. Perhaps John Thornton did not realize how small his panels would look,—panels three and a half feet square seem a fair size when you are working at them,—and no doubt access to the galleries was freer then than now; but a thirteenth century artist would not have made the mistake.[16]

Yet the architectural effect of the whole is little, if at all, the worse for it. The smallness of the panels only increases one's sense of the size of the window and gives the glass a jewel-like quality. It is all a twinkle of beautiful colour. Neither have the repairs effected by the eighteenth century glaziers hurt it much—pieces of clear coloured glass put in to fill up holes, and on which the glazier has usually scratched his name and the date with his diamond. Rather, I think, these tiny touches of pure colour (for they used quite a good blue) add to it and give it a quality.

What does detract from its beauty is the dirty quarry glazing which has been put outside it to protect it. Beautiful as the window still is, quite a third of its beauty of light and colour has been sacrificed by this means.

A transitional window.

There is some glass in the Lady Chapel which seems older than the east window. I have already alluded to the third window from the east in the south aisle which represents a stage of development corresponding to the earlier work of the Winchester School in the west window of Winchester Cathedral and the east windows of New College antechapel. The three lights contain three figures, St. Edward the Confessor between St. James and St. John the Evangelist, unless the former figure is also St. John appearing to the king as a pilgrim, as in the well-known story. Below are small scenes of the Massacre of the Innocents, Christ among the Doctors, and the Baptism in Jordan. The figures still have something of the S-like curve of the fourteenth century, but the canopies are white and of the transitional type. Perhaps the most interesting things in the window are the quarry panels at the bottom, which have a continuous flowing pattern of oak foliage running through the quarries, but with birds perching on it, so arranged that a bird comes in the centre of each quarry.

Thornton's successors.

There is some similar glass to this in the clerestory, but, with this exception and that of a fourteenth century window in the south aisle which has evidently been moved from the nave, the rest of the glass in the choir and Lady Chapel is the work of the school which was either founded by John Thornton at York, or at least profoundly influenced by him. It seems probable to me that it was in their work, which is found not only in the Cathedral but also in most of the parish churches of York, that the Perpendicular style in glass finally crystallized into the form which, with minor local differences, became universal throughout England.

Details from their work may be seen in Plates XXXIV.-XLIII. In one respect, namely in colour, they did not, as I have said, follow John Thornton, limiting themselves, for some reason unknown, very much to ruby, blue, and yellow stain. Plate XXXVIII. is a good instance of their method (the background of Plate XXXVI., it must be remembered, is modern). The blue is of a greyish quality, quite different from that of early times, but pleasant, and with a good deal of variety in it; a blue-black was sometimes used, as in Plate XXXVII., for monks' dresses.

A Jesse Tree.

The only exception to this rule is a window in the south aisle of the Cathedral choir, which contains parts of a Jesse Tree, in which the blue is combined with some very beautiful rich dark greens and a strong orange stain. Mr. Westlake thinks the glass is not York work at all. To me it seems not quite impossible that it is the work of John Thornton himself, the use of the deep orange stain in the east window being very similar. There is, however, no certainty of his authorship of any existing window but the east window. The glass in the Guildhall of Coventry is sometimes claimed for him, but I do not know of any evidence for it, and as it contains a portrait of Henry VI. as a grown man it can hardly be much earlier than 1440, thirty-five years later than the east window at York.

The St. William and St. Cuthbert windows.

Next to the great east window, the most important windows in the choir are those which fill the two choir-transepts, and which tell the histories respectively of St. William of York and St. Cuthbert. They are only five lights wide, but extend upwards to the full height of the church, and have double tracery and galleries like the east window. Except for their prevailing red and blue colouring, their general design resembles that of the east window, the whole window being divided, in the same way, into a series of small square subject panels with a short many-pinnacled canopy just filling the head of each light. The St. Cuthbert window, however, has, in addition, a life-size figure of the saint, which occupies two panels in the middle of the window. The two windows are evidently by the same hand, but the northern or St. William window is a good deal the older, having been presented, as it would seem from the portraits it contains, by Baron Ros of Hamlake about 1420, while the St. Cuthbert window cannot have been given till after 1426, and probably not till 1430 or later. No doubt, however, the execution of the first window would occupy a large part of the intervening time. Of the two, I rather prefer the effect of the St. William window, to which the larger amount of dark blue in the monks' dresses gives greater depth and richness, but the St. Cuthbert window shows perhaps more accomplishment in drawing. It is a fascinating occupation on a bright day to trace, with the aid of a strong field-glass, the stories unfolded in these rows upon rows of pictures in glass, to which a key may be found in monographs on the two windows, by the Rev. J. T. Fowler and his brother, published in the Yorkshire Archæological Journal, vols, iii.-iv.

St. Martin's, Coney Street.

All Saints', North Street.

More easily studied, because nearer to the eye, are the windows, again by the same hand, in the churches of St. Martin's, Coney Street, and All Saints', North Street. The former has a large west window containing a life-size figure of St. Martin, surrounded by small scenes from his life, the gift of a former vicar, Robert Semer, who has most obligingly recorded the date—1437—in an inscription. This would probably make it just a little later than the St. Cuthbert window, which its arrangement resembles. The glass at All Saints' is particularly interesting. The east window has three lights with large figures under canopies of the type shown in Plates XXXIV. and XXXV., which, though elaborate enough, have none of the unwieldiness of the fourteenth century type and are properly subordinate to the figures. These are St. Peter and St. Christopher (always a favourite subject in England), and, between them, St. Anne, teaching the Virgin to read. This last is a very beautiful group; the Virgin, a graceful girlish figure in white and yellow stain, with a wreath of white flowers round her head, is pointing with a short stick to the letters in a book held by her mother, who wears a deep ruby mantle over a blue dress, and a most curious red turban-like headdress[17] with ermine stripes, which is one of the most striking things in the window.

Below are the donors, Nicholas Blackburn, twice Mayor of York, and his wife Margaret (Plate XXXVI.), facing his son, also named Nicholas, and his wife, also named Margaret. The window has unfortunately been a good deal restored, and the background to the Blackburns is modern and was, I should think, originally blue. Modern, too, is the vivid green of the younger Nicholas's cloak. Margaret Blackburn, the elder, carries a book with the words, "Domine, labia mea aperies et os meum." The same verse occurs also, if I remember right, in a lady's hand at Selby Abbey. Were Yorkshire women, one wonders, so very silent?

Some of those in the north aisle are designed on the same plan as the St. William and St. Cuthbert windows, small subject panels arranged in rows. One shows the Six Corporal Acts of Mercy—Feeding the Hungry, Giving Drink to the Thirsty, Receiving Strangers, Clothing the Naked, Visiting the Sick, and Visiting the Prisoners. The little scenes are full of verve and "go," the fifteenth century artist having regained much of the life and vigour which makes the medallions of the Early Period so delightful, with an even greater power of expression. Plate XXXIX. represents the Merciful Man visiting the prisoners in the stocks. I wish Mr. Saint could have found time to have copied the whole of the scene, of which the humour is, I feel sure, not unconscious. Plates XXXVII. and XXXVIII. are from the bottom of this window, and show the donor and his wife with the priest saying mass for them.

Another window illustrates in a number of scenes the Last Fifteen Days of the World, as described in Richard Rolle's Pricke of Conscience, and is well calculated to make the evil-doer take thought and mend his ways.

Through the energy of the present rector, a full and careful catalogue and description of all the old glass in the church has been prepared and published. I only wish this were done for the Cathedral and other churches in York, which is richer, perhaps, in the quantity of its old stained glass than any other city in the world.

XV
FIFTEENTH CENTURY GLASS
IN FRANCE

XV
FIFTEENTH CENTURY GLASS
IN FRANCE

The influence of pictorial art.

The French school, when it revived in the second half of the fifteenth century, came, as I have said, almost at once, and far earlier than the English school, under the influence of the schools of painting which had been developed in the Netherlands (where the Van Eycks were working as early as 1420), and also, to an extent which has only been realized comparatively recently, in France itself.

There was both advantage and disadvantage in this. The drawing of the French is generally a little better than our own, and there is more variety and enterprise in their colour schemes than in our later Perpendicular work. On the other hand, it seems to me that almost from the beginning they were hampered, if ever so little at first, by the desire to apply to glasswork the standards of a different medium.

The difficulty had not arisen before. The illumination or wall painting of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century in England and the north of France could be translated into glass with little change, but, in the fifteenth century, the painters of illuminations and panel pictures had learnt all sorts of things about light and shade and landscape and flesh painting that did not come at all easily to the worker in glass and lead, and were of no help to him in his task of beautifying windows. It was inevitable that he should make some attempt to follow in the cry, and the extent to which he succeeded is amazing; but from henceforth, even where he most succeeds, it is to some extent by a tour de force, by a compromise between incompatibilities.

Early fifteenth century work.

For the first part of the century, as I have said, the number of windows produced in France seems to have been few. Such events as the disaster of Agincourt, the conquest of France by Henry V., and its deliverance by Joan of Arc can have left little money or thought for stained-glass windows. The names of the maîtres verriers of the cathedrals show that all through the time there were men who carried on the tradition, but their output seems to have been small. What windows they have left us do not show the same complete change from the work of the previous century that we find in England; the style did not as in England crystallize into a definite form, but remained as a transitional style between that of the fourteenth and late fifteenth centuries. In its general outlines the design did not at first differ greatly from that of the fourteenth century, but, as in England, the white canopy touched with stain took the place of all others, and there was a general increase in the amount of white in windows. In detail, however, the canopy altered slowly, and it was never as in England reduced to an almost flat pattern by the use of strong line work, but persisted in the attempt to imitate solid stone-work.

It is not till the second half of the century, when the wars were over, and France had settled down to quiet reconstruction under Louis XI., that we find any great revival of the art, and then it is very different to contemporary work in England.

Evreux.

There is a good deal of fifteenth century work still remaining at Rouen, though there seems to be a gap in the list of maîtres verriers to the Cathedral from 1386 to 1426. It was during this gap, however, in the year 1400, that a window, which still remains, was placed in the clerestory of the Cathedral at Evreux. The general plan of this window is that of those later fourteenth century windows in which the whole light was filled with towering canopy work. The canopy differs only slightly in detail from the late fourteenth century type, though there is a more decided attempt at perspective in it, but, like the English work of the time, it is all white, touched with stain, and the general effect of the window is much whiter than that of earlier work. The drawing of the figures, which represent the donor, Bishop Guillaume de Cantier, presented to the Virgin by St. Catherine, does not show any very great change from late fourteenth century work.

St. Ouen at Rouen.

The fifteenth century windows at Rouen follow, for the most part, the general design of the fourteenth century windows in the same churches. Thus the window in the chapel of SS. Peter and Paul in St. Ouen, which Mr. Westlake thinks to be the work of Guillaume Barbe, 1459-85, has much the same arrangement and proportions as the S. Gervais window in the south choir aisle shown in Plate XXV.; that is to say, a small figure panel, under a big canopy, is set half-way up each tall light of which the top and bottom is filled with quarries. There is the same coloured background to the canopy, ending at the top in the same arched shape, but in the treatment of the canopy itself one finds a difference not only from fourteenth century work but from English work of the fifteenth century. The French canopy, as I have said, had never, like the English, been reduced to an almost flat pattern of intricate line work, and in these Rouen windows one finds the artist already trying to imitate stone-work modelled in relief with results that are heavy and unsatisfactory. It is not that, in English work, individual shafts are not given a light and dark side, but the canopy is not, as in French work, modelled as a solid whole, and the strong line work seems to keep it right.

The revival.

It was not, however, till the second half of the century that any new life came into French stained-glass work, and when it came it brought with it a skill in picture-making that was borrowed from contemporary painting. To this period belong, I think, the fragments from Rouen shown in Plates XLV. to XLIX. The heads of St. Catherine and the old man, if compared with those from York, show the strong difference in facial type between French and English work at this time. The stain on the hair of St. Catherine is very coarse and inartistic as compared with English work, but then no other nation ever equalled the English in their delicate and refined use of stain.

St. Maclou.

The two heads of Angels (Plates XLVIII., XLIX.), which are from the north transept of St. Ouen, are, I think, by the same hand as an interesting "Assumption of the Virgin," which now occupies two lights of a window in the north aisle of St. Maclou in the same city. A significant point about this glass is that the picture, which is enclosed by a wide, flat-arched canopy, delicately modelled, stretches right across both lights, completely ignoring the intervening mullion, one of the first hints that stained glass was forgetting its architectural mission.[18] The composition is much more ambitious and pictorial, and the drawing more advanced than in any of the glass we have hitherto considered. In front is a crowd of kneeling saints in robes of blue, red, and green, above whom the Virgin kneels before the Almighty, while the top of the picture is filled with rows of golden-haired angels with red wings on a blue ground, of a similar type to those illustrated. I should put the date of the window at about 1470-80.

The Lady Chapel at Evreux.

Of about the same date are the side windows of the Lady Chapel of the Cathedral at Evreux, of which the building was finished, I believe, in 1475. I am surprised that Mr. Westlake, in his notice of the chapel, only mentions the east window with its Jesse tree, which to me is much less beautiful than the others, and which I should be inclined to attribute, at the earliest, to the very end of the century, if not to the following one. The four side windows tell the story of Christ's Ministry, Passion, and Resurrection, and show His second coming. Their arrangement is somewhat English, each window having two tiers of lights, each of which has a subject enclosed in a white canopy, but the technique is different from the English. By far the best is the first window of the series, which contains eight scenes from the Ministry of Christ, from the Marriage in Cana to the Entry into Jerusalem. The canopy work with its little figures in niches is modelled as Van Eyck might have done it; the method would not tell well at a distance, but owing to the narrowness of the chapel one cannot get far away from these windows. The figure panels are very rich in colour, Christ being always dressed in a deep purple, and the other figures in rich greens, blues, and reds. The other windows of the series are not quite so good, being thinner and poorer in effect, and seem to me to have been executed by another hand, possibly from the designs of the author of the first window, who may have died in the interval. There is a good deal of similar work in the church of St. Taurin in the same town.

From the pictorial point of view these windows are much more accomplished than anything that had so far been done in England. In comparing English and French fifteenth century work, however, it must always be remembered that the best English work was done during the first half of the century, and is far better than the French work of that time, whereas the best French work was done in the second half of the century when the English Perpendicular style had for the most part become stereotyped and dull, and seemed to resist the introduction of new ideas. These Evreux windows represent the style which, under the influence of contemporary picture-painting, was growing up on the Continent, but which did not obtain a foothold in England till the advent, almost at the end of the century, of the school which produced the Fairford windows.

XVI
MALVERN AND FAIRFORD

XVI
MALVERN AND FAIRFORD

So great was the quantity of stained glass produced in England in the fifteenth century, and so much still remains, that it is impossible, in this book, even to mention all the more important examples. We have seen the growth and perfection of the Perpendicular style at York. At Great Malvern Priory you may study its gradual decadence.

Great Malvern: the "Creation."

The best of the windows there are undoubtedly the earliest, namely, those in St. Anne's Chapel which include the famous "Creation," of which the date is perhaps 1440-50. It cannot, I think, compare with John Thornton's "Creation" in the east window of York Minster,—the colour scheme is so much more conventional and less expressive,—but it is nevertheless very beautiful. The resemblance of some of the scenes to those in Thornton's window is perhaps no more than one would expect to find in two representations of the same subject in the same period, but at the same time the Malvern "Creation" is very much akin to York work, though rather to the later phase represented by the St. Cuthbert and the All Saints' windows, than to the work of Thornton. I may be wrong, but I sometimes suspect that the inhabitants of the Severn and Avon valleys had more intercourse with the North of England—to which access would be easy by the Avon and Trent, navigable most of the way—than with the Thames Valley and South of England, from which they were cut off by the wild and inhospitable Cotswolds.

The north transept window.

In comparing the later windows in Malvern Priory with the "Creation" and its neighbours in St. Anne's Chapel, one can trace a decided and increasing decadence. The forms are the same but stereotyped and dull, the artists seem timid in their use of colour, and all the life seems to go out of the style. The great north transept window, given in 1501-2 by Henry VII. (it once contained his portrait and still has that of his son Prince Arthur and the architect, Sir Reginald Bray), is, compared with the earlier work, a very poor affair. The yellow stain in particular is very coarse and overdone, yet such was the hold which this style had got on our countrymen that in spite of the late date of the window there is not a hint in it of the new ideas which were then coming in, although it is probable that before it was finished, the famous windows of Fairford, not forty miles away across the Cotswolds, had at least been begun.

Fairford.

The old church of Fairford with its square central tower, standing on a green slope above a rushing trout stream, which, a few miles below, unites with the baby Thames and makes it a navigable river, occupies a unique position, not merely as the only village church in England—one may, perhaps, say in the world—which still retains the whole of its original set of stained-glass windows almost intact, but from the quality of the windows themselves. Some, it is true, have suffered damage, but there is not a subject unrecognizable, nor a window missing.

The new style.

The church was begun by John Tame, merchant of London, and finished by his son, Sir Edward; but since John Tame's will, dated 1496, while bequeathing various sums for ornaments to the church, makes no mention of the glass, it is argued that the glass had been already ordered. The Fairford windows are usually classed as Perpendicular on the strength of their association with Perpendicular architecture and the presence of Perpendicular detail in the canopies and elsewhere, but it is a wholly different style to the Perpendicular of York, of Malvern, of Warwick; the style which, with little change, had held the field in England since the beginning of the century. Fairford, in fact, marks a revolution in English stained glass. It is an early, if not the first work of a new school which, throwing away the old native tradition, based its style on that which had grown up on the Continent and, still more, upon Flemish painting. The Fairford windows represent a phase of their art which did not last very long, for their style soon began to assimilate itself to that of the Renaissance. In the windows of King's College Chapel at Cambridge you may see the change happening, and in the latest windows there you may also, alas! see the rapid setting in of decadence. It was, indeed, a style which contained in itself the seeds of decay, which germinated all too rapidly; but these, its first-fruits, at Fairford are magnificent, and disarm criticism.

They mark, as I say, a complete departure from the older standards of English fifteenth century glass. It is the same story, once more repeated, of old conventions of drawing becoming out of date, and failing to satisfy a newer generation. Of the more advanced schools of painting, the Flemish was the one that Englishmen were most in touch with, and it was thence that the new school of English glass-workers took their inspiration, with the result that a Flemish feeling is traceable in all their work. One immediate result of the more pictorial standard now expected of the artist was that he came to depend in quite a different way on the painting of his glass as distinct from the glazing. At Fairford, elaborate landscape backgrounds are put in with the brown enamel alone, helped by yellow stain, sometimes on white, sometimes on grey-blue glass, to which latter the stain gives a green for grass and trees. Not as yet, however, does the painting take precedence of the glazing, the balance being for a time held equal between the two. Indeed the craft of glazing, as well as that of painting, was now at its height; the artist had all the resources of both at his command and used them to the full, but as yet the limits of the medium were not overstepped.

Another result of the pictorial standard now arrived at, was that the artist began to feel cramped by the narrow lights he had to fill, and to let his subjects spread through more than one of them, ignoring the intervening mullion. At Fairford many of the subjects occupy two lights, and the "Crucifixion" at the east end and the "Doom" at the west spread right across the whole width of the window. As yet this is not so done that one loses the sense of the design decorating the stone-work; but both these developments are indications of a tendency which was to increase as time went on, and eventually to ruin the art.

The new point of view naturally affected the canopy, which is shaded like solid stone-work, giving it a heavy and clumsy effect. In many of the subject windows, however, the canopy is omitted altogether, the sky of the picture, which is sometimes white, with clouds and circling swifts painted on it, continuing right up to the stone-work.

The problem of the authorship of the windows.

I agree with Mr. Westlake in finding the work of more than one hand in the windows. Two there are certainly, and possibly four. The east window is certainly by a different, and, I think, an older hand than the west, and the windows of the north aisle, though they may be by the same hand as the west windows, are certainly by a different one to the Apostles opposite them, which are the poorest windows in the church. I think the differences are greater than could be accounted for by any development that might take place in the same man's style during the execution of the windows. The west windows are the work of a different temperament to the east windows. The forms are fuller, stronger, and more rounded, and show a much stronger sense for the decorative placing of a line.

There is no record to tell us who these men were, and there has been much discussion as to whether they were Englishmen or Flemings. Indeed the wildest theories have been advanced as to the origin of the windows. They have been attributed to Dürer, without the slightest internal or external evidence except the presence of an A which does not resemble his signature. Another story which, though not heard of, I believe, till the eighteenth century, has obtained wide credence, is that they were captured at sea, bound for Rome, by Edward Tame, and the church built to contain them; but the most casual examination of the windows ought to convince any one that they were made for the church and not the church for them.[19]

As to the question of the English or Flemish authorship of the windows, it is true that Flemish details crop up here and there both in architecture and the costumes; but this is not surprising, for the style, new then to England, was largely based on Flemish art, and on the other hand the English characteristics are in excess of the Flemish.

Barnard Flower.

In Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster, high up in the central clerestory window of the apse, is a single figure under a canopy which bears a most striking resemblance to the series of the Prophets at Fairford (Plate L.). In the figure, in the scroll he holds, in the canopy, in the treatment of the drapery, and even in the queer drawing of the hands, the resemblance is so close that I for one cannot doubt their common authorship. Now it is on record that the windows of Henry VII.'s Chapel were glazed by "one Barnard Flower," the king's glazier, who also is the glazier named in the first contract for the windows in King's College Chapel at Cambridge, but who died in 1525-26 before they were finished. A comparison of those windows at Cambridge which are believed to be his work, especially that over the north door, with the Fairford windows, reveals many points of resemblance, and, allowing for the twenty years which probably separate the execution of the two works, I think we should not be far wrong in assigning to Flower the whole of the north aisle at Fairford, and perhaps the Latin Fathers in the south aisle. Whether the west windows are his work too I do not feel sure, and to the names of the other artists who took part in the work we have no clue.