Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/528

354 used any coloured glass for windows. The first notice of windows of a church made of coloured glass, occurs in Chronicles quoted by Muratori. In the year 802, a pope built a church at Rome, and 'fenestras ex vitro diversis coloribus conclusit atque decoravit.' And in 856 he produces 'fenestra vero vitreis coloribus,' &c. This, however, was a sort of Mosaic in glass. To express figures in glass, or what we now call the art of painting in glass, was a very different work: and, I believe, I can shew it was brought from Constantinople to Rome before the tenth century, with other ornamental arts. Guiccardini, who wrote about 1560, in his Descrittione de tutti Paesi Bassi, ascribes the invention of baking colours in glass for church-windows to the Netherlanders; but he does not mention the period, and I think he must be mistaken. It is certain that this art owed much to the laborious and mechanical genius of the Germans; and, in particular, their deep researches and experiments in chemistry, which they cultivated in the dark ages with the most indefatigable assiduity, must have greatly assisted its operations. I could give very early anecdotes of this art in England."—.