Part 8

Curiously enough, in spite of the fourteenth century fondness for elaborate canopies, we find at the same time another type of window in which they are wholly absent, the figures being placed simply upon a background of quarries. Plate XXIV., one of a series from the clerestory of St. Ouen at Rouen, is an example of this. Here the figures stand, it is true, on little architectural bases (an exception to the rule I mentioned just now), but elsewhere these too are absent.

[Sidenote: The S-like pose.]

(5) _The Style of Drawing the Figure._--The chief characteristic of this in fourteenth century work is its apparent affectation. There seems to have been a sudden revolt from the taste for dramatic force of action which characterized the subject panels of the thirteenth century. Look at Plate XXXI. from Rouen, with its three little panels showing the Annunciation and the Visitation. In each the figure is in exactly the same pose, and that a perfectly meaningless one, like an elongated letter S. Yet this pose seems to have become all the fashion, for it is almost universal in the work of this period, and is found even in such transitional work as the east windows of the antechapel of New College, Oxford, which, in other respects, belong far more to the succeeding period.

Yet in spite of this loss of naturalism in movement, in the actual drawing of forms, both of the figure and of drapery, there is an advance. If you will compare St. Luke from the clerestory of St. Ouen at Rouen in Plate XXIV. with Methuselah from Canterbury in Plate III., you will see the change that has occurred. St. Luke has far less character and force, he is far less alive, his pose and gesture mean nothing, or at most are mildly argumentative, and yet there is a certain sense in which he, and still more his drapery, is better drawn, or if not better, at all events in a more advanced manner. This is more noticeable if you compare St. Luke or the little figures in Plate XXX. with the big angel from Chartres in Plate X., which is not so well drawn as the Methuselah.

[Illustration: PLATE XXV WINDOW WITH LIFE OF ST. GERVAIS, FROM SOUTH CHOIR AISLE, ST. OUEN, ROUEN Fourteenth Century]

[Sidenote: The effort towards grace of form.]

The fact is that the twelfth and thirteenth century convention in figure drawing had served its turn well, but was now worn out. Deriving, originally, as we have seen, out of Greek art in its Byzantine form, it had formed a stock on which the artist of the Early Period had been able to graft his own observation and love of nature, but it had now ceased to satisfy and was therefore abandoned. The progress of drawing in other arts, or at all events in sculpture, had taught men to demand something different. The artist of the late thirteenth century, as the last influence of Greek art died out of his work, had undoubtedly neglected grace of form in his enthusiasm for vigorous and naturalistic movement; and, as so often happens when one quality in art is neglected, a reaction had come, in which people demanded that quality above all others. Consequently, the chief effort of the draughtsman of the fourteenth century, if I understand him rightly, was to bring his drawing of form up to the standard required of him, the S-like attitude, for instance, being merely a trick to get a willowy gracefulness into his figures, especially those of women.

The same tendency is observable in the drawing of drapery. The drapery of the thirteenth century was entirely conventional in the method in which it was drawn, but it was always in movement and helped the

## action of the figures. Fourteenth century drapery, on the other hand,

is always at rest, or at most sweeping with the slow movement of a figure, but its folds are drawn in a much more advanced manner than before, and seem to bear evidence of a certain amount of direct study of actual drapery, either on the part of the artist or of those whom he was following. The ideal of gracefulness shows itself in a love for long and sweeping folds, as may be seen in Plates XXIV., XXX., XXXI.

At first the artist is content to use in his drawing the strong line work of the preceding period, but as the century proceeds this becomes rather more delicate, and he begins to feel his way towards modelling in half-tones. The drapery over the Virgin's knees in Plate XXI. shows this very clearly.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVI GRISAILLE PATTERN AND BOSS FROM PLATE XXV]

[Sidenote: Neglect of movement.]

With this preoccupation with the truer rendering of form, it is perhaps not surprising that the study of action was neglected. The artist had enough to do to draw his figures and drapery in repose without making them move about and do things, and a contributory cause was, no doubt, the weakening of interest already alluded to in the subjects he had to illustrate. This then is why, whereas in the thirteenth century we find a highly conventional rendering of form allied to naturalism in movement, in the fourteenth, conversely, we find conventional poses and movement allied to a more naturalistic rendering of form.

Comparative study of the illuminated manuscripts of the same period shows exactly the same changes in progress. So closely do the two arts keep pace with each other that I do not think it can be said that at any time either was leading the other. They must have been in very close touch even if they were not, which it is quite possible they often were, practised by the same artists. The lead, if there was a lead, must have come from sculpture.

[Sidenote: Natural plant forms in ornament.]

(6) _The use of Natural Plant Forms in Ornament._--This is another manifestation of the same spirit, and divides the work of the fourteenth century most sharply from that both of the preceding and following periods. The Jesse Trees, and the leafy scrolls and borders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries belong to no genus known to botanists, but in the fourteenth century it seems as if the artist, the inspiration of religion failing him, had sought it in a rather literal study of Nature. Accordingly in the grisaille and borders of this period we find patterns formed of oak leaves and acorns, ivy leaves, maple, vine, and so on. Plate XXVI. is rather an exception in that one cannot name the particular plant; but Plates XXVIII. and XXIX. contain characteristic examples, and Plate XXI. shows a good vine border from York, and some holly leaf grisaille.

Yet the feeling for Nature in these patterns does not go very deep. The artist is, for instance, content to make the oak wreath and twine itself as freely as the vine, and I always feel that his practice is the result of theory rather than the spontaneous expression of love of Nature. The earlier worker was really, I believe, more in tune with Nature than his successor of the fourteenth century. He did not copy her forms in ornament but he followed her principles. He did not copy her forms, because she had taught him to design forms for himself. Nature, it may be observed, does not adorn one object with copies of another, hardly even when she gives her creatures protective colouring and markings, but gives to each the patterning which suits it best. In the same way the ornament of the twelfth and thirteenth century artist is always perfectly suited to its purpose without distracting one's attention; and when his subject requires him to represent a tree or a bush,--such as the fig tree under which Nathanael sits, or the thicket in which the ram is caught, at Canterbury,--though the foliage is that of the shamrock, he knows how to make it grow and live better than his fourteenth century successor. The waves, too, of the Flood in Plate IV., conventional though they are, give a real sense of tossing and stormy water.

[Sidenote: Change in material.]

[Sidenote: Fourteenth century colour schemes.]

(7) _The Quality of Glass and the Colours Used._--At first these differ little from those used in the previous period, but as the fourteenth century proceeds, the rich intense reds and blues, with their "streakiness," their endless variety of tone and texture, which makes each piece of glass a jewel with an individuality of its own, and needing no enrichment, give way to glass of a thinner, flatter quality. In Plate III. Mr. Saint has managed to catch and the printer to reproduce something of the quality of these early blues. There is a change too in the proportions of the colours used. The colour schemes of the Early Period are almost always conceived on a basis of red and blue, but now green and yellow become equally important; Plates XXI., XXII., for example, contain very little blue at all. The canopies when not white are mainly yellow, and this alone is responsible for a very large amount of yellow in the colour scheme--too much, in fact, as a rule. The yellow used at first, till silver stain took its place, was, as I have said, a rather hot unpleasant pot-metal. The green of the First Period had been a rather sharp brilliant colour, used generally in small quantities, and striking a high shrill note among the deep reds and blues, like a clarionet in an orchestra. The typical green of the fourteenth century, on the other hand, which is often used as a background, is a greyer duller colour altogether. Plate XVI. and Plate XXI. give a fairly good idea of its quality.

[Sidenote: White glass for flesh.]

Another change, which was the natural result, both of the increased amount of white now used in windows and of the introduction of the silver stain, was the gradual substitution of white glass in the flesh of figures for the brownish pink formerly used. Its use afforded an opportunity for getting white in amongst the colour, and so helping to bind the design together, and the fact that the hair, crowns, and mitres of figures could now be stained yellow, rendered it on the whole the most suitable glass for the purpose, and we find it holding the field down to the late sixteenth century, when a pinkish enamel began to be used.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVII BOSSES, FROM PLATE XXV]

[Sidenote: Painted diapers.]

(8) _The use of Painted Diaper Patterns on the Coloured Backgrounds._--The red and blue backgrounds to the figures in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries needed no further decoration. Their own depth and quality was enough in itself, but the thinner, flatter tones that succeeded them needed enriching and giving texture to, in order to throw the figures up into proper relief; or so the fourteenth century artist seems to have felt, for from the beginning we find his backgrounds usually covered with a diaper painted in enamel.

The method is always the same; the ground having been covered with an even coat of enamel, the pattern is scratched out clear with the point of a stick or a brush handle. Plates XVI., XX., XXI. are typical examples, and show in detail the kind of pattern that was used.

It is very rarely that we find anything of the kind in the previous period. There is, as we have seen, an isolated and early example of it at Canterbury, where a rather paler, poorer blue has been used than in the other windows, but there it is more delicate than in the fourteenth century, the pattern being scratched out of a very thin semi-transparent mat of enamel; and it is found too in some late thirteenth century windows in St. Urbain at Troyes, but in fourteenth century work it is frequently met with even at the beginning of the period, and by the end of the first quarter of the century it is the rule, and remains so throughout the succeeding century as well.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII BORDERS, FROM PLATE XXV]

IX

EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURY GLASS IN ENGLAND

(MERTON COLLEGE AND EXETER)

The windows in the chapel of Merton College, Oxford, are perhaps the earliest in which the design of the Second Period has taken a definite and typical form. Antony à Wood, in his catalogue of Fellows, says that the donor, Henry de Mamesfield or Mannesfield, whose portrait is in the windows, caused them to be made in 1283, but in view of an order in the Bursar's Rolls of 1292 for stone for building these windows, this date must be rejected. Antony à Wood's statement elsewhere that the _whole_ chapel was pulled down and rebuilt in 1424 shows he is not altogether to be relied on. The presence of the fleur-de-lis with the castle of Castile in some of the borders makes it probable[12] that they were done after Edward I.'s second marriage with Margaret of France in 1299, while the arms of an Heir-Apparent as well as of a King of England in the east window makes it certain that they were executed while Edward I. and his son were both alive, _i.e._ before 1307. On the whole, and by comparison with the York glass, I should think 1303-1305 a not improbable date for them.

[Sidenote: The east window.]

There are seven windows on each side and a great east window, and, with the exception of the latter, they are still fairly perfect. Of the east window it is only the beautiful "wheel" tracery which retains its original glass, the lower lights, alas! having been destroyed in 1702 to make room for a monstrosity by one Pryce--a horrible blare of yellow. What remains in the tracery has a more transitional character than the other windows, and was probably executed first, and if only the lower lights had remained they might have thrown an interesting light on the development of the style.

The three trefoils in the centre of the wheel contain three coats of arms--the short triangular shields of the thirteenth century, of which the first is that of Edward I., the leopards of England; the second the same with a label of five points azure for his son, afterwards Edward II.; and the third that of Walter de Merton, the founder of the college. For the most part the other lights contain ornament that is wholly fourteenth century in character, but the quatrefoil on each side has a feature which shows the early date of the window. In these two small figures representing the Annunciation, though themselves in the style and colouring of the early fourteenth century, are placed directly on a background of red and blue mosaic diaper, such as one finds again and again in thirteenth century work in France, and among the fragments in the South Rose at Lincoln. I have often thought that thirteenth century glaziers sometimes kept this mosaic filling in stock, and perhaps the artist of Merton had some left on his hands and used it up here. In any case it would seem to show that the style in which he was working was fairly new to his workshop.

[Sidenote: The side windows.]

The fourteen side windows are designed on a plan which is typical of fourteenth century work both in England and in France, especially Normandy. The sections into which the glazing is divided by the heavy iron frame-bars are taken as the units of the design. One in each light is filled with a coloured panel--a figure under a canopy--and the rest with grisaille having a coloured boss in the centre of each, the whole being surrounded by a coloured border. The effect is that of a range of greenish-white windows just dotted and edged with colour, and with a single broad band of colour running horizontally through them all. This plan is common in all early fourteenth century work, especially in England and Normandy. Evreux is another example, York nave another, but with two rows of coloured panels, and the window from Rouen in Plate XXV. is only an elaboration of it forty years later. At Merton College, however, the canopy has not yet run mad, but is of modest proportions, figure and canopy together only occupying one section of glazing.

The grisaille itself is for the most part of "bulged" quarries curving round the central bosses, but two on each side have true quarries. All have the trellis pattern formed by doubling the lead with a painted line and a continuous flowing pattern of foliage--vine, oak, ivy, and fig--spreading through it over the window from a central stem. Plate XXVI. is a later example of the same thing, but with the addition of silver stain, which is nowhere found in the Merton windows.

The borders, when not formed of castle and fleur-de-lis, are of a kind found in the Chapter-House at York, and common in other fourteenth century windows--leaves white or yellow, branching at intervals from a straight or wavy stem on a coloured ground. There is not much variety in the coloured bosses, which all consist either of a simple four-leaved pattern or of a small head in white on a coloured disc. There are, I think, only four different designs of these heads--Christ, an old man, a king, and a queen continually repeated.

[Sidenote: Poverty of ideas.]

The most woeful poverty of ideas is, however, found in the figures under the canopies. There are fourteen windows of three lights each, with a figure in each,--forty-two in all,--yet the designer could think of nothing better to do than to put an apostle in the centre light of each window, repeating two apostles to make them go round, and in every window but two a kneeling figure of the donor--"Magister Enricus de Mamesfield"--in the light on each side. Thus the proud and happy Master Henry might see himself reproduced no less than four-and-twenty times, in robes of red, white, brown or blue, wide sleeved robes with a hood, doubtless the M.A.'s gown of the period.

Neither are the apostles very interestingly treated. They are almost repetitions of each other, standing in the same conventional pose and distinguished only by their attributes. The backgrounds of the figures are diapered with enamel in the usual fourteenth century way.

In point of development these windows come between the Chapter-House and the earliest nave windows at York, and correspond with the earliest work at Evreux, being the earliest windows in which the style of the Second Period has taken final and definite form. They are not without their beauty, but in looking at them one wonders what has become of the spirit that created the windows of Canterbury, Chartres, and Bourges.

[Sidenote: Exeter east window.]

Of the same stage of development as the Merton windows are the earliest of the figures remaining in the east window of Exeter Cathedral. Although this window was rebuilt and enlarged in 1390, the original glass was, it is known, used again and eked out with new. There is an entry in the Fabric Rolls of 1301-1302 for 1271 feet of glass at 5½d. per foot, "ad summas fenestras frontis novi operis"--which seems to mean the east end of the choir, and two years later a payment to Master Walter the glazier for fixing the glass "summi gabuli," but no further light is thrown on its origin. Later on, however, in the roll for 1317-1318, there is an entry for glass, apparently for the Lady Chapel, "bought at Rouen" at the rate of 6d. a foot for white (? grisaille) and 1s. 0d. for coloured, and from this it has been argued that the whole of the glass up to that time was bought from Rouen too. To me, however, the fact that Rouen is specifically mentioned here, and nowhere else, militates against this theory, while if the price of 5½d. a foot paid for the glass of the east window was for finished figure work, it is far lower than that of the Rouen glass. The figures themselves are much larger than those at Merton College, and on the whole more interestingly treated. There are nine of them remaining: three patriarchs; three apostles--St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Andrew; and three female saints--St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and, I think, the Magdalen. The canopies are large in proportion, being nearly twice the height of the figures,--an unusual height for so early a date,--but they are not unlike the Merton canopies in style. There is no trace of silver stain either in the canopies or the figures.

Another fact which to some extent tells against the theory of their Rouen origin, is that so far I have found no glass of that date at Rouen which at all resembles them, whereas as late as 1290-1295 Clement of Chartres was, as we have seen, doing work there, which shows little change from the style of the middle of the thirteenth century.

[Sidenote: Grisaille at Exeter.]

There is some very interesting grisaille in two of the chapels at Exeter, of an earlier type than that at Merton, being in fact transitional between the style of the First and Second Periods. It has the interlacing medallions of coloured strap work, with the painted grisaille pattern passing behind them, but this latter, though chiefly of the "Herba Benedicta," breaks here and there into natural leafage. It is a slightly earlier point of development than even the Chapter-House at York, and corresponds very closely with some at St. Urbain at Troyes.

FOOTNOTE:

[12] This is not altogether conclusive. The fleur-de-lis and castle had been a favourite ornament in French glass since their adoption by St. Louis.

[Illustration: PLATE XXIX DETAILS, FROM PLATE XXV]

X

FOURTEENTH CENTURY GLASS AT YORK

The best work of the Second Period that I know of anywhere is to be found in York Minster. Here the new style seems to have become engrafted on a strong local school which had preserved much of the life and vigour of the previous age. It is true that even here one finds a certain weakening of the religious motive, but its place seems to be to some extent taken by a patriotic enthusiasm for a warrior king and for the gallant nobles who followed him in the Scotch wars, and whose arms are everywhere in the glass of the nave.

[Sidenote: Chronological order of the windows.]

The windows themselves show a steady and almost unbroken progression in style from the late thirteenth to the early part of the fifteenth century, which makes them most useful for study. Leaving out the fragments of very early glass I have mentioned before, the order of their execution seems to be--

1. The "Five Sisters." 2. Chapter-House. 3. The vestibule of the Chapter-House. 4. The clerestory of the nave. 5. The first five[1] in the north aisle of the nave (dated by Winston 1306). 6. The first five[13] in the south aisle of the nave. 7. The sixth in the north aisle of the nave. {The three west windows of the nave (contract 1338). 8. {The sixth in the south aisle of the nave. {One (probably from the nave) in the south aisle of the choir. 9. The third from the east in the south side of the Lady Chapel. 10. The fifteenth century windows in the choir and Lady Chapel, which we shall come to later.

Whatever difference of opinion there may be about the date of these windows, I do not think this order can be disputed.

[Illustration: PLATE XXX ANGELS IN CANOPY WORK OF PLATE XXV]

[Sidenote: The Chapter-House.]