stained glass

stained glass. Glass that has been given translucent colour in any of various ways, used particularly in church windows. Although the term ‘stained glass’ is now hallowed by long usage, much window glass could more strictly be described as ‘coloured’ (when it is dyed in its substance) or ‘painted’ (when pigments are applied to its surface). The art began in the service of the Christian Church and in its most characteristic development and its highest achievements it is essentially an art of Western Christendom, practised most splendidly in the west and north of Europe as an adjunct to Gothic architecture. Its early history is obscure, as there are few survivals before the Romanesque period (the church of St Paul at Jarrow, near Newcastle upon Tyne, has some fragments—placed in a window in 1980—that are probably more or less contemporary with the foundation of the monastery there in the late 7th century). The earliest known complete windows still in situ—in Augsburg Cathedral—are variously dated between 1050 and 1150, and show an art already nearly perfect, with a technique that has endured in principle to the present day, developed or modified only in inessential details.

Medieval windows are generally made up of hundreds of small pieces of glass of varied colours and shapes held together by strips of lead—somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle with dark outlines around the pieces. Windows of any size were made up of several panels so treated, and these were set in a framework of iron (‘armature’) that served not only as a support against wind pressure, but also to accentuate the main lines of the design of the window. The period from roughly 1150 to 1250 was the greatest age of stained glass: colours were strong and simple; designs were bold and fresh; and the feelings conveyed were lofty and awe-inspiring. The glass was coloured by adding various metallic oxides at the molten stage (copper for red, for example, and cobalt for blue). Such glass that is dyed one colour throughout its thickness is known as pot glass or pot metal. Details—such as facial features—were added to it by black pigment, which was fixed to the surface by means of a light firing. True ‘staining’ was introduced in the 14th century and was achieved by applying silver salts to white glass and firing it in a kiln; this produced a yellow colour, and orange could be obtained by repeating the process.

From the 15th century, stained glass generally became more pictorial, imitating the effects of oil painting, and this tendency was accentuated in the 16th century with the introduction of a range of enamel colours, with which the artist could paint on the glass more or less as he would on canvas (aided by the fact that improving technology enabled glass to be made in larger and flatter sheets than previously). This trend reached its height in the 18th century with such works as the west window of the chapel of New College, Oxford, designed by Reynolds and executed in 1778–85; it includes a Nativity scene inspired by Correggio, whose fluid, soft forms are a world away from the firm black outlines of medieval glass. Windows of this kind can have a charm of their own, but they are anathema to many students of the subject: E. Liddell Armitage, in his book Stained Glass (1959), describes the use of enamel as ‘an artistic poison…which killed practically every aesthetic faculty the craftsman of the period might inherently have possessed’. With the Gothic Revival in the 19th century there came a return to medieval principles, and William Morris and his associates (notably Burne-Jones) were among the foremost designers in this spirit. In the 20th century many noteworthy artists have designed stained-glass windows, in both figurative and abstract veins—among them Chagall, Matisse, Piper, and Patrick Reyntiens (1925– ), a leading specialist in the field who as well as creating his own glass has manufactured that designed by Piper.

The distinctive beauty of stained glass has been well described by Gerald Randall in Church Furnishing and Decoration in England and Wales (1980): ‘However intrinsically interesting wall and ceiling paintings may be, there is no doubt that the contribution of glass to our churches is more important. Glass has the advantage of transmuting light instead of merely reflecting it, and at its best has a sparkle and vitality that no opaque surface can match. Its effect changes with the light, from one day to another and from one hour to the next, and there are moments when the whole interior of a church seems to take fire from it.’