Page:EB1911 - Volume 12.djvu/122

 fire stain it yellow enabled the glass painter to get yellow upon colourless glass, green upon grey-blue, and (by staining only the abraded portions) yellow upon blue or ruby. This yellow was neither enamel nor pot-metal colour, but stain—the only staining actually done by the glass painter as distinct from the glass maker. It varied in colour from pale lemon to deep orange, and was singularly pure in quality. As what is called “white” glass became purer and was employed in greater quantities it was lavishly used; so much so that a brilliant effect of silvery white and golden yellow is characteristic of later Gothic windows.

The last stage of glass painting was the employment of enamel not for stopping out light but to get colour. It began to be used in the early part of the 16th century—at first only in the form of a flesh tint; but it was not long before other colours were introduced. This use of colour no longer in the glass but upon it marks quite a new departure in technique. Enamel colour was finely powdered coloured glass mixed with gum or some such substance into a pigment which could be applied with a brush. When the glass painted with it was brought to a red heat in the oven, the powdered glass melted and was fused to it, just like the opaque brown employed from the very beginning of glass-painting.

This process of enamelling was hardly called for in the interests of art. Even the red flesh-colour (borrowed from the Limoges enamellers upon copper) did not in the least give the quality of flesh, though it enabled the painter to suggest by contrast the whiteness of a man’s beard. As for the brighter enamel colours, they had nothing like the depth or richness of “stained” glass. What enamel really did was to make easy much that had been impossible in mosaic, as, for example, to represent upon the very smallest shield of arms any number of “charges” all in the correct tinctures. It encouraged the minute workmanship characteristic of Swiss glass painting; and, though this was not altogether inappropriate to domestic window panes, the painter was tempted by it to depart from the simplicity and breadth of design inseparable from the earlier mosaic practice. In the end he introduced coloured glass only where he could hardly help it, and glazed the great part of his window in rectangular panes of clear glass, upon which he preferred to paint his picture in opaque brown and translucent enamel colours.

Enamel upon glass has not stood the test of time. Its presence is usually to be detected in old windows by specks of light shining through the colour. This is where the enamel has crumbled off. There is a very good reason for that. Enamel must melt at a temperature at which the glass it is painted on keeps its shape. The lower the melting point of the powdered glass the more easily it is fused. The painter is consequently inclined to use enamel of which the contraction and expansion is much greater than that of his glass—with the result that, under the action of the weather, the colour is apt to work itself free and expose the bare white glass beneath. The only enamel which has held its own is that of the Swiss glass-painters of the 16th and 17th centuries. The domestic window panes they painted may not in all cases have been tried by the sudden changes of atmosphere to which church windows are subject; but credit must be given them for exceptionally skilful and conscientious workmanship.

The story of stained glass is bound up with the history of architecture, to which it was subsidiary, and of the church, which was its patron. Its only possible course of development was in the wake of church building. From its very inception it was Gothic and ecclesiastical. And, though it survived the upheaval of the Renaissance and was turned to civil and domestic use, it is to church windows that we must go to see what stained glass really was—or is; for time has been kind to it. The charm of medieval glass lies to a great extent in the material, and especially in the inequality of it. Chemically impure and mechanically imperfect, it was rarely crude in tint or even in texture. It shaded off from light to dark according to its thickness; it was speckled with air bubbles; it was streaked and clouded; and all these imperfections of manufacture went to perfection of colour. And age has improved it: the want of homogeneousness in the material has led to the disintegration of its surface; soft particles in it have been dissolved away by the action of the weather, and the surface, pitted like an oyster-shell, refracts the light in a way which adds greatly to the effect; at the same time there is roothold for the lichen which (like the curtains of black cobwebs) veils and gives mystery to the colour. An appreciable part of the beauty of old glass is the result of age and accident. In that respect no new glass can compare with it. There is, however, no such thing as “the lost secret” of glass-making. It is no secret that age mellows.

Stained and painted glass is commonly apportioned to its “period,” Gothic or Renaissance, and further to the particular phase of the style to which it belongs. C. Winston, who was the first to inquire thoroughly into English glass, adopting T. Rickman’s classification, divided Gothic windows into Early English (to c. 1280), Decorated (to c. 1380) and Perpendicular (to c. 1530). These dates will do. But the transition from one phase of design to another is never so sudden, nor so easily defined, as any table of dates would lead us to suppose. The old style lingered in one district long after the new fashion was flourishing in another. Besides, the English periods do not quite coincide with those of other countries. France, Germany and the Low Countries count for much in the history of stained glass; and in no two places was the pace of progress quite the same. There was, for example, scarcely any 13th-century Gothic in Germany, where the “geometric” style, equivalent to our Decorated, was preceded by the Romanesque period; in France the Flamboyant took the place of our Perpendicular; and in Italy Gothic never properly took root at all. All these considered, a rather rough and ready division presents the least difficulty to the student of old glass; and it will be found convenient to think of Gothic glass as (1) Early, (2) Middle and (3) Late, and of the subsequent windows as (1) Renaissance and (2) Late Renaissance. The three periods of Gothic correspond approximately to the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. The limits of the two periods of the Renaissance are not so easily defined. In the first part of the 16th century (in Italy long before that) the Renaissance and Gothic periods overlapped; in the latter part of it, glass painting was already on the decline; and in the 17th and 18th centuries it sank to deeper depths of degradation.

The likeness of early windows to translucent enamel (which is also glass) is obvious. The lines of lead glazing correspond absolutely to the “cloisons” of Byzantine goldsmith’s work. Moreover, the extreme minuteness of the leading (not always either mechanically necessary or architecturally desirable) suggests that the starting point of all this gorgeous illumination was the idea of reproducing on a grandiose scale the jewelled effect produced in small by cloisonné enamellers. In other respects the earliest glass shows the influence of Byzantine tradition. It is mainly according to the more or less Byzantine character of its design and draughtsmanship that archaeologists ascribe certain remains of old glass to the 12th or the 11th century. Apart from documentary or direct historic evidence, it is not possible to determine the precise date of any particular fragment. In the “restored” windows at St Denis there are remnants of glass belonging to the year 1108. Elsewhere in France (Reims, Anger, Le Mans, Chartres, &c.) there is to be found very early glass, some of it probably not much later than the end of the 10th century, which is the date confidently ascribed to certain windows at St Remi (Reims) and at Tegernsee. The rarer the specimen the greater may be its technical and antiquarian interest. But, even if we could be quite sure of its date, there is not enough of this very early work, and it does not sufficiently distinguish itself from what followed, to count artistically for much. The glory of early glass belongs to the 13th century.

The design of windows was influenced, of course, by the conditions of the workshop, by the nature of glass, the difficulty of shaping it, the way it could be painted, and the necessity of lead glazing. The place of glass in the scheme of church decoration led to a certain severity in the treatment of it. The growing desire to get more and more light into the churches, and the consequent manufacture of purer and more transparent