Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/99

Rh Bk. IV. Ch. VI. GLASS PAINTING. 83 which we find in later German architecture arose from the reaction of the ghiss-i^ainters on the builders. When first painted glass was extensively introduced, the figures were grouped or separated by architectural details, such as niches or canopies, copied literally from the stone ornaments of the building itself. Before long, however, the ])ainter, in Germany at least, spurned at being tied down to copy such mechanical and constructive exigencies; he attenuated his columns, Ijent and twisted his pinnacles, drew out his canopies, and soon in- vented for himself an architecture bearing the same relation to the 528. Doorway of Church at Chemnitz. stone Gothic around him that the architecture shown on the paintings of Pompeii bears to the temples and l)uildings from which it is derived. In Germany, painters and builders alike were striving after lightness, biit in this the painter was enabled by his material easily to outstrip the mason. The essentially stone cliaracter of architecture was soon lost sight of. With the painter, the finials, the crockets, and the foliage of the capitals again became cojiies of leaves, instead of the conventional representations of nature which they are and must be in all traie art. Like Sir James Hall in modern times, the specu- lative mind in Germany was not long, Avhen advanced thus far, in