Part 8 (1/2)
It is not meant to suggest that we should do in the nineteenth century only what was done in times gone by. Our means are ampler now, our wants are more. We can follow tradition only so far as it suits our wants; and, in carrying it further, we are sure to arrive at something so different that it may be called a new thing. If old methods do not meet new conditions we must invent others. The problem of our day is how to reconcile manufacture with anything like art; or failing that, whether there is a livelihood for the independent artist-craftsman?
Whoever it may be that is to make our stained gla.s.s windows in the future, he will have to make them fit the times. He may discover new materials. Meanwhile it is of no use quarrelling with those he has. He must know them and humour them. Bars have to be accepted as needful supports, leads to be acknowledged as convenient joints; gla.s.s must be allowed its translucency, and painting kept to what it can best do. A window should own itself a window.
And what is the aim and use of a stained gla.s.s window? To ”exclude the light,” said the poet, sarcastically. Yes, to subdue its garishness, soften its glare, tinge it with colour, animate it with form perhaps.
The man who means to do good work in windows will devote as serious study to old gla.s.s as a painter to the old masters. He will not rest satisfied without knowing what has been done, how it was done, and why it was done so; but he will not blind himself to new possibilities because they have never yet been tried. The pity is that often the antiquary is so bigoted, the gla.s.s painter so mechanical, the artist so ignorant of gla.s.s. The three men want fusing into one. The ideal craftsman is a man familiar with good work, old and new, a master of his trade, and an artist all the while; a man too appreciative of the best to be easily satisfied with his own work, too confident in himself to accept what has been done as final; a man experimenting always, but basing his experiments upon experience, and proving his reverence for the great men who light the way for him by daring, as a man has always dared, to be himself.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER XI.
THE DESIGN OF EARLY GLa.s.s.
Design in gla.s.s developed itself on lines almost parallel to the progress of technique. Each, of course, affected the other--how and why it is now proposed to show.
It is not intended at present to say more than is absolutely necessary about ”Style,” in the historic sense--that is reserved for a chapter by itself--but, as it is convenient to refer to a period of design by its name, it will be as well at this stage briefly to enumerate the historic ”Periods.”
Gla.s.s follows, inevitably, the style of architecture of the period.
Accordingly it is divided broadly into Gothic and Renaissance. Gothic, in its turn, is divided by Rickman (who first attempted to discriminate between the styles of architecture in England) into three periods.
Winston, who did for English gla.s.s what Rickman did for English architecture, adopts his cla.s.sification as follows:--Early Gothic--to about 1280. Decorated Gothic--to about 1380. Perpendicular Gothic--to about 1530.
Renaissance art has been cla.s.sified in Italy according to the century, and in France has been named after the reigning sovereign--Francois Premier, Henri Deux, and so on. In England also we make use of the terms Tudor, Elizabethan, Jacobean, and the like. No one, however, has attempted to draw subtle distinctions between the periods of Renaissance gla.s.s, for the obvious reason that the best of it was done within a comparatively short period, and the rest is not of much account. It is enough, therefore, to mark off two divisions of Renaissance gla.s.s. The first (which overlaps the latest Gothic) may be called Sixteenth Century, or by the Italian name Cinque-Cento, or simply Renaissance; whilst the second, which includes seventeenth century and later work, is sufficiently described as Late gla.s.s.
The development of style in other countries was not quite parallel with its march on this side of the water. The French were always in advance of us, whether in Gothic or Renaissance; the Germans lagged behind, at all events in Gothic; but the pace is equal enough for us to group windows generally into three Gothic and two Renaissance periods--Early, Middle, and Late Gothic; Early and Late Renaissance. If we do that it will concern us less, that Early German work is more Romanesque than Gothic, that Late French work is not Perpendicular but Flamboyant, and so on.
The accepted cla.s.sification is determined mainly by the character of the architectural or ornamental detail of the design. Such architectural or other detail--that of costume, for example--is of the very greatest use as a clue to the date of gla.s.s. That is a question of archaeology; but it is not so much the dates that artists or workmen have to do with as with the course of craftsmans.h.i.+p, the development of art. It is convenient for us to mark here and there a point where art or workmans.h.i.+p has clearly reached a new stage; it gives us breathing time, a starting-point on some fresh voyage of discovery; but such points need be few. The less we bother ourselves by arbitrary subdivisions of style the better; and Winston himself allows that his divisions are arbitrary.
The student need not very seriously concern himself about dates or names. People are much too anxious to get a term for everything, and when they can use the term glibly they fancy they know all about the thing. It is no doubt easier to commit to memory a few names and a few dates than to know anything about a craft; but the one accomplishment will not do in place of the other. A very little real knowledge of art or practical workmans.h.i.+p will lead you to suspect, what is the truth, that there is a good deal of fee-fi-fo-fum about the jargon of styles.
It is handy to talk of old work as belonging to this or that broadly marked historic period; and it is well worth the while of any one interested in the course of art to master the characteristics of style.
The student should master them as a matter of course; but he must not take the consideration of period for more than it is worth. Really we give far too much attention to these fas.h.i.+ons of bygone days--fas.h.i.+ons, it must be allowed, on a more or less colossal scale, compared to ours, but still only fas.h.i.+ons.
It is proposed then to allude here only so far to the styles as may be necessary to explain the progress of design, and especially the design of stained gla.s.s windows.
In dividing Gothic into Early, Middle, and Late Gothic, corresponding roughly with the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, it is not forgotten that there is an earlier Gothic of the twelfth and perhaps eleventh centuries, more or less reminiscent of the Romanesque period preceding it; but English gla.s.s begins, to all intents and purposes, with the thirteenth century, and even in France there is not a very great quant.i.ty of characteristically earlier gla.s.s. What there is differs from thirteenth century work mainly in the Romanesque character of the figure drawing and ornamental detail, in its deliberately simple composition, and in the spontaneity of its design. The glazier was still feeling his way. Any composition to be found in a Byzantine ivory-carving, enamel, illuminated ma.n.u.script, or what not, might just as well occur in gla.s.s. The more familiar types of early Gothic window design had not yet settled down into orthodoxy. The lines on which the oldest windows extant were set out are in the main those of the thirteenth century also. They were more or less suggested by the shape of the window opening, which, it will be seen, had always had a good deal to say as to the direction gla.s.s design should take.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 58. POITIERS.]
The window openings in Romanesque or Norman-French churches were single lights, round or pointed arched, rather broad in proportion to their width. Stained gla.s.s, it has been explained, has to be held in its place by copper wires, soldered to the leadwork, and attached to iron bars let into the masonry for that purpose. In the case of a very narrow lancet, such bars would naturally be placed at convenient intervals across the opening. But for the most part windows were the reverse of narrow, and the horizontal bars had to be supplemented by vertical stanchions, so that the window s.p.a.ce was divided into rectangular divisions. As a matter of construction the gla.s.s was made in panels, corresponding to these, and attached to them. It is not surprising, therefore, that these divisions should often have been accepted as part of the design, or that the design of the gla.s.s should to some extent have followed them. On page 113 is the skeleton of the upper part of a twelfth century window.
The strong black lines in the diagram show the bars, the finer ones indicate the main divisions of the design of the gla.s.s. It will be seen that the four strips into which the upright bars divide the window are not equal, but that the outer divisions are narrower than the inner, so as to accommodate themselves to the width of the border. Naturally that was determined always by the proportion of the window; such borders measured often one-sixth part, or more, of the entire width. The way in which the central circular shape in the gla.s.s breaks across in front of the border is an instance of the spontaneity and unexpectedness of design characteristic of the earliest existing work; later one series of forms would repeat themselves without interruption throughout the length of the window. When, as above, the centre of a window is occupied by a great crucifix, or, as below, other such irregularity occurs, it is safe to conclude that the gla.s.s, if not prior to the thirteenth century, belongs to its first years. It is characteristic of the very early date of the gla.s.s that the bars in the diagrams given do not go out of their way to follow the outline of the circles, vesicas, quatrefoils, and other shapes, but on occasion cut relentlessly across them.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 59. POITIERS EAST WINDOW. (Compare with 24.)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: 60. POITIERS, NORTH TRANSEPT.]
The filling out of such a skeleton as those given would in many respects be much the same in the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth century; and in each case it would be in direct pursuance of the traditions of Early Christian design. You may see in Byzantine ivories and enamels precisely the kind of thing that was done in gla.s.s; and in the Romanesque Michaelis Kirche at Hildesheim, is a painted roof, the design of which might have been carried out, just as it is, in a giant window.