Part 10 (1/2)

Dignity of effect there can be none. Not now for the first time, seemingly, is art sacrificed to what we call the literary idea.

It shakes one's faith somewhat in the sincerity of the early mediaeval artist to find that in the serried ranks of Kings, Prophets, Bishops, and other holy men, keeping guard over the church in the clerestory lights, one figure often does duty for a variety of personages, the colour only, and perhaps the face, being changed. At Reims there are as many as six in a row, all precisely of the same pattern, though the fraud may not be detected until one examines them from the triforium gallery. At Lyons, again, it looks as if the same thing occurred; but one cannot get near enough to them to be quite certain. None the less they are fine in colour. Thirteenth century gla.s.s was capable of great things in the way of colour; and the rows of Kings and Prophets looking down upon you from the clerestory of a great church like Bourges, archaic though the drawing be, are truly solemn and imposing.

CHAPTER XIII.

EARLY GRISAILLE.

With grisaille gla.s.s begins a new chapter in the history of gla.s.s painting, and a most important one--not only because of the beautiful work which was done from the first in white, but also because coloured gla.s.s grew, so to speak, always towards the light.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 85. S. SERGE, ANGERS.]

The first coloured windows were intense in colour, rich, and even heavy.

The note they struck was deep, solemn, suited to the church and to the times. Neither priest nor paris.h.i.+oner was afraid to sacrifice a certain amount of light. It was the business of a window to shut in those that wors.h.i.+pped from the outer world, and wrap them in mysterious and beautiful gloom. With other days, however, came other ideals. As time went on, and men emerged from the dark ages, the problem of the glazier was how more and more to lighten his gla.s.s; until at last white gla.s.s predominated, and the question was how to introduce colour into it.

Meanwhile the thirteenth century glaziers resorted, where they wanted light, to the use of windows in grisaille, in absolute contrast to the rich picture-gla.s.s in the same church.

The model for grisaille design was readily found in the earlier pattern work in plain glazing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 86. S. SERGE, ANGERS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 87. S. JEAN-AUX-BOIS.]

This last never quite went out of use. But already in the thirteenth century, and probably in the twelfth, it began to be supplemented, for the most part, by painting. The exceptionally graceful work at S. Serge, Angers, for example, on this page and the last, is probably not very much later than the year 1200. You can see at a glance how this is only a carrying further of the unpainted work in the same church (page 27) attributed to the thirteenth century. There may be found indeed amidst the plain glazing sc.r.a.ps of painted work; but they never happen to fit, and have pretty certainly found their way into the window in course of repairs. The unpainted window seems to be of greener and more silvery gla.s.s than the painted, to which perhaps the cross-hatching gives a rather h.o.r.n.y look.

The one way of painting grisaille in the thirteenth century was to trace the design (which of course followed the traditional lines) boldly upon the white gla.s.s, and then to cross-hatch the ground, more or less delicately according to the scale of the work and its distance from the eye, as here shown. By this means the pattern was made to stand out clear and light against the background, which had now the value of a tint, only a much more brilliant one than could have been got by a film or wash of colour. Very occasionally a feature, such as the group of four crowns which form the centre of the circle, above, might be emphasised by filling in the ground about them in solid pigment; but that was never done to any large extent. The rule was always to cross-hatch the ground.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 88. S. JEAN-AUX-BOIS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 89. SOISSONS.]

With the introduction of colour into grisaille comes always the question as to how much or how little of it there shall be. There is a good deal of Early French work, which, on the face of it, was designed first as a sort of strapwork of interlacing bands in plain glazing, and then further enriched with painted work, not growing from it, except by way of exception. This is seen in the example here given. The painter indulged in slight modifications of detail as he went on. He had a model which he copied more or less throughout the window; but he allowed himself the liberty of playing variations, and he even departed from it at times. By this means he adapted himself to the gla.s.s, which did not always take just the same lines, and at the same time he amused himself, and us, more than if he had multiplied one pattern with monotonous precision. His painting was strong enough to keep the leads in countenance; that is to say, his main outlines would be as thick (see opposite) as lead lines.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 90. EARLY DETAIL.]

Patterns such as those on pages 138, 139, and below, from Soissons, Reims, S. Jean-aux-Bois, would make good glazed windows apart from the painting on them. Indeed, the painting is there comparatively insignificant in design. In the Soissons work, in particular, it consists of little more than cross-hatching upon the background, to throw up the interlacing of the glazed bands; for, with the exception of just a touch of colour in the one opposite, these designs are executed entirely in white gla.s.s. The geometric glazing shapes so completely convey the design, that the painted detail might almost be an after-thought.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 91. SOISSONS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 92. REIMS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 93. LINCOLN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 94. WATER PERRY, OXON.]

In much of the earliest grisaille there is absolutely no colour but the greenish hue belonging to what we are agreed to call white gla.s.s, and the effect of it is invariably so satisfactory as to show that colour is by no means indispensable. And, at all events in France, the colour was at first very sparingly used, except in those twelfth century patterns (pages 35, 118, 120) which cannot fairly be called grisaille. In the window on page 137 the colour is, practically speaking, enclosed in small s.p.a.ces ingeniously contrived between the interlacing bands of white; in that on page 138 it is introduced in half rings, which form part of the marginal line, and in spots or jewels; but in either case there is little of it, and it is most judiciously introduced. The interlacing of bands of plain white upon a ground of cross-hatching, itself enriched with scrollwork clear upon it, is characteristically French. Similar bands of white occur, though not interlacing, in the comparatively clumsy panel from Lincoln (above), but the more usual English way was to make the bands of white broader, and to paint a pattern upon them, as in the lancet from Water Perry, Oxfords.h.i.+re (opposite), or in the much more satisfactory light from Lincoln (overleaf), leaving only a margin of clear gla.s.s next the cross-hatched background. A similar kind of thing occurs in the church of S. Pierre at Chartres (below). A yet more usual plan with us was to make the strapwork in colour, as at Salisbury. In the patterns on this page the straps do not interlace. In that on page 143 they not only interlace one with the other, but the painted ornament, which now takes the form of more elaborate scrollwork than heretofore, is intertwined with them.

This is an extremely good example of Early English grisaille. Altogether Salisbury Cathedral is rich in white gla.s.s windows of this period (pages 143, 148, 329, 332).