Illustration: Stained glass design, Bourges Cathedral, France, 13th century.
Medieval stained glass design is spectacularly eye-catching as was its point and obvious purpose, and one of the most memorable features of Europe's medieval cathedrals. The use of colour imagery is one of the few remaining vestiges of colour decoration in an original medieval setting that it still available to us in our own contemporary world. To imagine cathedrals covered in decorative colour work as intense, if not more so, than the stained glass windows that remain, forces us to restage, at least in our imagination, the medieval intensity of decoration probably not seen again until the complex decorative work of Victorian medievalists such as Pugin.
However, sometimes it is worthwhile to purposely ignore the obvious and settle on the less observationally intense areas of decoration. Although medieval stained glass windows were set to impress, on a scale that was divinely as well as status driven, the windows were also the combined work of craftsmen and designers. Many of these creative individuals have now been long forgotten or were never intended to be remembered in the first place, as the sponsor of the work was usually the intended name that was attached to the piece and was therefore remembered for posterity.
Illustration: Stained glass design, Bourges Cathedral, France, 13th century.
All of the stained glass work illustrating this article comes from Bourges Cathedral in the heart of France, and dates from around the thirteenth century. Four of the illustrations purely show different forms of border decoration and this in many ways can be just as interesting as the main work of the stained glass window. In many respects, border work gives more of an impression of the style and tone of medieval pattern work than does the main figurative work on display. British early to mid-Victorian critics and scholars were particularly interested in all forms of medievalism and sometimes the minute analysis and observation of border work, whether that be in stone, glass or wood, gave a much stronger indication as to what really entailed medieval pattern work than some of the grander and more obvious pieces.
European cathedrals proved particularly attractive to British scholars as a number had escaped the rigors of the Protestant 'cleansing' of medievalism that had taken place across Britain from the sixteenth century onwards. This act had painstakingly and consistently removed much of the original woodwork fixings, sculpture and wall painting of cathedrals, abbeys and churches and is now often referred to as a form of vandalism on a statewide scale. To be fair French ecclesiastical buildings had also suffered during the wars over religion and indeed the Revolution, however, despite this there were still significant reminders of medieval craft work still on show during the nineteenth century and in many respects Catholicism had given these institutions a form of continuity that was lacking in Britain.
Illustration: Stained glass design, Bourges Cathedral, France, 13th century.
What is perhaps less savoury but more interesting all the same, is the number of medieval ecclesiastical artefacts that were often openly on sale in France to British cultural tourists after the defeat of Napoleon. A number of items both valuable and mundane in the form of sculpture, manuscripts, metals both precious and ordinary, and even stained glass, found their way back to the collections of a number of collectors and cultural scholars across Britain, including Pugin, Morris and others. To say that few questions were asked as to origin, legitimacy or provenance, is perhaps an understatement, but perhaps reflects the less litigious and certainly more cavalier attitude of the period, at least towards artefacts.
Often pieces were not necessarily collected for their worth or rarity as they are today, but more for the interest generated in Britain for the decorative arts, and the medieval in particular. Pieces were often conceived as being of inspirational use for contemporary decorative work, both in ornament and decoration. Therefore, small, seemingly mundane items such as the borders of stained glass windows for example, were considered vital in order to understand the essence of medieval design and craftwork. To understand the underlying reasoning, even the anatomy of specific medieval decorative work, would have provided observational ideas for contemporary decoration and ornament, which would have made the results all the more fluid and believable.
Illustration: Stained glass design, Bourges Cathedral, France, 13th century.
Pugin, Ruskin, Morris and others regularly travelled to Northern France for inspiration. Most tended to avoid Paris and concentrate on the medieval stock of cathedrals, abbeys and churches that Normandy for example, seemed to have in abundance, at least for the Victorian medievalist. The percentage of publications devoted to the detailing of often small areas of decorative work, multiplied as the nineteenth century progressed. There was a particular high point in the middle of the century, which of course coincided with the Gothic Revival. Publications dealing with ornament for example, could be limited to one period, one style, one geographical area, even one type of leaf.
This detailing must not be dismissed as a form of Victorian obsession with the minutiae of decoration, but was in fact a useful and often scientific display of interest in decoration for its own sake rather than for that of display and wonder. How leaves were interpreted in borders, how much of each colour was used and in what tone, the percentage of geometrical as opposed to nature-driven ornament, all were discussed and analysed often in as much detail as the original publication. In many respects, they give a fascinating glimpse of the medieval work of craftsmen and architects, some of whose work has long since disappeared in the intervening World Wars and urban and industrial changes in Europe. However, perhaps just as importantly they also give us an even better glimpse of the Victorian working mind. With its nature of systematic identifying and quantifying strategies, the nineteenth century has not only through its myriad and profuse publications, saved a wealth of knowledge of the more prominent decorative and ornamental medieval wonders of Europe, it has also given us the world of the small-scale, ordinary and mundane. These are equally precious and although not as spectacular or as complex as some of the medieval achievements on display, still give a particularly interesting and often more obviously relevant idea as to the details of medieval ornament, decoration and craftwork.
Illustration: Stained glass design, Bourges Cathedral, France, 13th century.
Picturing the Celestial City: The Medieval Stained Glass of Beauvais Cathedral
Studies in Medieval Stained Glass and Monasticism
English and French Medieval Stained Glass in the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Corpus Vitrearum)
Art and Architecture in Medieval France: Medieval Architecture, Sculpture, Stained Glass, Manuscripts, the Art of the Church Treasuries (Icon Editions)
Monastery and Cathedral in France: Medieval Architecture, Sculpture, Stained Glass, Manuscripts, the Art of the Church Treasuries
The Armor of Light: Stained Glass in Western France, 1250-1325 (California Studies in the History of Art)
Bread, Wine, and Money: The Windows of the Trades at Chartres Cathedral
Mont-Saint Michel and Chartres: A Study of Medievalism (Thru the Use of the Cathedral's Architecture, Sculpture and Stained Glass)
Rainbow Like an Emerald: Stained Glass in Lorraine in the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries (Monographs on the Fine Arts)
The Narratives of Gothic Stained Glass (Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism)
The Gothic Cathedral
Stained glass of the middle ages in England and France
