Part 4 (1/2)
Moreover, it could be as readily traced in lines or little touches of colour as it could be floated on in broad surfaces. By its aid it was as easy to render the white pearls on a bishop's golden mitre as to give the golden hair of a white-faced angel, or to relieve a white figure against a yellow ground--and all without the use of intervening lead.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 36. DIAPER IN WHITE AND STAIN, ALL SAINTS' CHURCH, YORK.]
It is not surprising that such a discovery had a very important effect upon the development of the gla.s.s painter's practice. By means of it were produced extraordinarily beautiful effects, as of gold and silver, peculiarly characteristic of later Gothic work. The crockets and finials of white canopies would be touched with it as with gold, the hair of angels and the crowns of kings; or the nimbus itself would be stained, the head now being habitually painted on one piece of white gla.s.s with the nimbus. The crown and the pearl-edged head-band of the Queen of Sheba, from Fairford, (page 50), are stained upon the white gla.s.s out of which the head is cut. In the figure of S. Gregory on page 51 the triple crown is stained yellow, and so is the nimbus of the bull, whose wings also are shaded in stain varying from light to dark.
Of the elaborate diapering of white drapery, with patterns in rich stain, more and more resorted to as the fifteenth century advanced, a specimen is here given, in which the design is figured in white upon a yellow ground, outlined with a delicately traced line of brown. Stain was seldom used on white without such outline.
In the end white and stain predominated. Early gla.s.s was likened to jewellery; now the jewels seem to be set in gold and silver. There was a loss in dignity and grandeur, but there was a gain in gaiety and brightness. How far stain encouraged the more abundant use of white gla.s.s which prevailed in the fifteenth century it might be rash to say; at any rate, it fitted in to perfection with the tendency of the times, which was ever more and more in the direction of light, until the later Gothic windows became, in many instances, not so much coloured windows as windows of white and stain enclosing panels or pictures in colour.
Even in these pictures very often not more than about one-third of the gla.s.s was in rich colour. And not only was more white gla.s.s used, but the white itself was purer and more silvery, lighter, and at the same time thinner, giving occasion and excuse for that more delicate painting which perhaps was one great reason for the change in its quality. At all events, the more transparent character of the material necessitated more painting than was desirable in the case of the hornier texture of the older make. Hence the prevalence of diaper already referred to.
By the latter half of the fifteenth century painting plays a very important part in stained gla.s.s windows. We have arrived at a period when it is no longer subsidiary to mosaic; still it has not yet begun to take precedence of it. The artist is now a painter, and he relies for much of his effect upon painting; but he is a glazier, too, and careful to make the most of what gla.s.s can do. He designs invariably with a view to the glazing of his design, and with full knowledge of what that means. He knows perfectly well what can be done in gla.s.s, and what cannot. He has not yet carried painting to the perfection to which it came eventually to be carried, but neither has he begun to rely upon it for what can best be done in mosaic. He can scarcely be said to prefer one medium to another; he uses both to equally workmanlike purpose. He does not, like the early glazier, design in lead any longer, but neither does he leave the consideration of leading till after he has designed his picture, as painters came subsequently to do.
It amounts, it might be thought, to much the same thing whether the artist begins with his lead lines and works up to his painting, as at first he did, or begins with his painting and works up to the leads, as became the practice,--so long as in either case he has always in mind the after-process, and works with a view to it. But the truth seems to be that few men have ever a thing quite so clearly in their minds as when they have it in concrete form before their eyes. The glazier may reckon upon the paint to come, but he does not rely upon it quite so much as the painter who starts with the idea of painting.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 37. NATIVITY, GREAT MALVERN.]
The later Gothic artists gradually got into the way of thinking more and more of the painting upon their gla.s.s. In the end, they thought of it first, and there resulted from their doing so quite a different kind of design, apart from change due to modifications of architectural style; but so long as the Gothic tradition lasted--and it survived until well into the sixteenth century, in work even which bears the brand of typical Renaissance ornament--so long the glazing of a window was in no degree an after-thought, something not arranged for, which had to be done as best it might. It is apparent always to the eye at all trained in gla.s.s design that the composition even of the most pictorial subjects was very much modified, where it was not actually suggested, by considerations of glazing. As more and more white gla.s.s came to be used, it was more and more a tax upon the ingenuity of the designer so to compose his figures that his white should be conveniently broken up, and the patches of colour he wanted should be held in place by leads which in no way interfered with his white gla.s.s; for it is clear that, in proportion as the white was delicately painted, there would be brutality in crossing it haphazard by strong lines of lead not forming part of the design; and to the last one of the most interesting things in mediaeval design is to observe the foresight with which the gla.s.s-worker plans his colour for the convenience of glazing.
There is very skilful engineering in the subject from Ross on page 339.
It is not by accident that the hands of the hooded figure rest upon the shoulders of S. Edward, or that, together with his gold-brocaded surcoat and its ermine tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, his hands, and the gilt-edged book he holds in them, they fall into a shape so easy to cut in one piece. Scarcely less artful is the arrangement of the head of the bishop with his crosier and the collar of his robe all in one. The gla.s.s painter has only to glance at such subjects as the Nativity from Great Malvern (page 54), or the Day of Creation from the same rich abbey church (page 252), or at the figure of S. Gregory from All Souls', Oxford (page 51), to see how the colour is planned from the beginning, and planned with a view to the disposition of the lead lines. In the Nativity, which is reproduced from a faithful tracing of the gla.s.s, and is in the nature of a diagram, the actual map of the glazing is very clear, in spite of its disfigurement by leads which merely represent mending, and form no part of the design.
There, too, may clearly be seen how the yellow radiance from the Infant Saviour is on the same piece of whitish gla.s.s on which the figure is painted. In the Creation and S. Gregory, which are taken from careful water-drawings, the effect of the gla.s.s is given, and it is perceived how little the leads obtrude themselves upon the observation in the actual windows.[A]
Footnote A: These, together with ill.u.s.trations 35, 44, 54, 142, 156, 174, 191, 207, 234, are from the admirable collection of studies from old gla.s.s very kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. John R.
Clayton, himself a master of design in gla.s.s.
The Preaching of S. Bernard from S. Mary's, Shrewsbury, opposite, is again disfigured by accidental leads, where the gla.s.s has been repaired; but it will serve to show how, even when lead lines are as much as possible avoided, they are always allowed for, and even skilfully schemed. Many of the heads, it will be noticed, are painted upon the same pieces of white which does duty also for architectural background; or white draperies are glazed in one piece with the white-and-yellow flooring; yet the lead lines, as originally designed, seem to fall quite naturally into the outlines of the figures.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 38. S. BERNARD PREACHING, S. MARY'S, SHREWSBURY.]
A very characteristic piece of glazing occurs in the foreground figure, forming a note of strong colour in the centre of the composition. The way the man's face is included in the same piece of gla.s.s with the yellow groining of the arch, while his coloured cap connects it with his body, bespeaks a designer most expert in glazing, and intent upon it always. The danger in connection with a device of this kind, very common in work of about the beginning of the sixteenth century--as, for example, in the very fine Flemish gla.s.s at Lichfield--is that, being merely painted upon a white background, and insufficiently supported by leads, the head may seem not to belong to the strongly defined, richly draped figure. It is, of course, very much a question of making the outline strong enough to keep the leads in countenance. The artist of the Shrewsbury gla.s.s adopts another expedient at once to support the lead lines, to connect his white and colour, and to get the emphasis of dark touches just where he feels the want of them. He makes occasional use of solid black by way of local colour, as may be seen in the hood of the abbess and the shoes of the men to the right.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 39. S. MARY'S, SHREWSBURY.]
In another subject from Shrewsbury (here given), in the bodice of the harpist, and the head gear of the figures on page 104, effective use is made of these points of black. So long as they remain mere points, the end justifies the means, and there is nothing to be said against their introduction; they are entirely to the good; but such use of solid pigment is valuable mainly in subjects of quite small size, such as these are. It would be obviously objectionable if any considerable area of white gla.s.s were thus obscured.
The gla.s.s referred to at Shrewsbury, Malvern, and Oxford is of later date than much work in which painting was carried further; but there is here no question of style or period; that is reserved for future consideration (Book II.). The fact it is here desired to emphasise is, that there was a time when glazier and painter took something like equal part in a window, or, to speak more precisely, there were for a while windows in which the two took such equal part that each seemed to rely upon the other; when, if the artist was a painter he was a glazier too.
Very likely they were two men. If so, they must have worked together on equal terms, and without rivalry, neither attempting to push his cleverness to the front, each regardful of the other, both working to one end--which was not a mosaic, nor a painting, nor a picture, but a window.
CHAPTER VI.
GLa.s.s PAINTING (MEDIaeVAL).
The end of the fifteenth century brings us to the point at which painting and glazing are most evenly matched, and, in so far, to the perfection of stained-and-painted gla.s.s, but not yet to the perfection of gla.s.s painting. That was reserved for the sixteenth century, when art was under the influence of the Renaissance. Gla.s.s painting followed always the current of more modern thought, and drifted picturewards.
Even in the fourteenth century it was seen that there was a fas.h.i.+on of naturalism in design, in the fifteenth there was an ever-increasing endeavour to realise natural form, and not natural form alone; for, in order to make the figure stand out in its niche, it became necessary to show the vault in perspective. It was obviously easier to get something like pictorial relief by means of painting than in mosaic, which accordingly fell by degrees into subordination, and the reign of the gla.s.s painter began. It must be admitted that at the beginning of the sixteenth century there was still room for improvement in painting, and that to the realisation of the then pictorial ideal stronger painting was actually necessary.