Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:42:12.500Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Transition from the Mosaic to the Enamel Method of Painting on Glass

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

John A. Knowles
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The change from the mosaic to the enamel system of glass-painting and the causes which led up to it do not seem to have received from historians of the art the attention which they rightly deserve. The popular view, as stated in all the books, is that glass-painters adopted enamels in preference to coloured glass. Therefore, as the demand for pot-metals fell off, there was less and less inducement for glass-makers to make them, so that the art dwindled away until it was finally lost.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , January 1926 , pp. 26 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1926

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 27 note 1 Ordinances of the Glaziers, York Memo. Book. Ed. by Dr. Sellars, Maud, Surtees Soc., vol. i, 50, and ii, 208.Google Scholar

page 27 note 2 Ashdown, , Hist. Worship. Comp. of Glaciers, p. 17.Google Scholar

page 27 note 3 Ottin, Vitrail, Le, p. 50.Google Scholar

page 27 note 4 e.g., in the following contracts: Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick, 1447; Duomo of Arezzo, 1477 and 1515 (printed in Gaye, Carteggio Inedito d'Artisti, ii, 446 and 449); Cath. of Arretium, 1513 (ibid.); Sainte Marie d'Auch, in contracts dated 1620, 1641, and 1647, and contract with Bernard Van Ling for east window of Wadham College, Oxford, dated 1621.

page 27 note 5 The Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini, trans, by Mrs. Herringham, chap. 171.

page 27 note 6 The ordinances show that, to a very large extent, they were drawn up by the civic authorities and imposed upon the craft. We cannot imagine any association of employers and capitalists throwing their workshops open to inspection by others in the same trade who were probably their competitors in business; or voluntarily offering to fine themselves or each other, half of the fine to go to the city, or making a rule that the mayor and city council could at any time alter the ordinances of the craft in any way ‘by thare discrecions’, without the slightest mention being made of consulting the feelings of the members of the craft on the matter! Vide Ordinances of the Glaziers, 1463, Tori Memo. Book, Surtees Soc, ii, 208.

page 28 note 1 Amongst these were Rimaugia of Paris, Jacques Damen, Nicholas Chanen rue des Billettes, Paris; A. Poreser near St. Jacques de la Boucherie, Nicolas le Lorraine, Hugues Auzolle of Gourdon in Quercy, and three others whose names are unknown. The upper windows of the quire were carried out by Francois Vierges of Auch, and Pierre Autipout of Gimont, in 1620. Autipout was a nephew of Arnaud de Moles who painted the windows of the quire. The eighteen upper windows, and the three roses of the nave and transepts, were carried out in 1641 by Pierre Autipout, now described as living in the city of Auch. The lower windows of the nave were done by Joseph Darnes of Toulouse in 1647 (M. de la Carsalade du Pont, Let Verrieres des nefs de la cathedrale d'Auch, Revue de Gascogne, 1897, p. 387, and L'Abbé Caneto, Sainte Marie d'Auch, roy. fol. 185:7). At the time the Abbé Caneto wrote, the three contracts were not available, but M. de Carsalade du Pont entirely missed the real significance of them. He attributes the change from the coloured windows of the quire to the quarry windows in the nave, to the changed conditions in religion and the introduction of prayer books, which could not be used in a dim religious light! It is certain that large quantities of early glass were removed, as for example in the transepts at York, in the fifteenth century as the fashion for rich and solemn colours changed to that for more light. Thus in 1510 the parishioners of Burton Pidse complained to the Bishop that a window ‘in ye north parte of ye qwher is so dyme yt no mane may see on yt sied yt syng in ye qwher’ (Tork Minster Fabric Rolls, Surtees Soc, p. 265).Google Scholar John Bruce, parson of Stapleford in the sixteenth century, had all the windows of his chapel and of the church of Tarvin taken out because they ‘obscured the brightness of the Gospel’ (Ormerod's, Cheshire, i, 174)Google Scholar , and Prisdon, speaking of the church of Ottery St. Mary, said: ‘The windows little and low are so bedecked with the arms of divers benefactors, that instead of Lux Fiat it may be verified that they are umbrated thereby’ (Trans. Exeter Archaeol. Soc, i, p. 40). But the demand for more light was certainly not the reason why, at Auch, the scheme for a series of windows representing the mysteries of the Blessed Virgin was abandoned and plain quarry work inserted instead.

page 31 note 1 Evelyn's, Memoirs, vol. iii, p. 65 (8vo ed.).Google Scholar

page 31 note 2 Knowles, J. A., Henry Gyles, Glass-Painter of York, Walpole Soc., vol. xi, pp. 63 and 68.Google Scholar

page 31 note 3 Handmaid to the Arts, 1764, vol. i, p. 346Google Scholar ; Dallaway, , Observations on English Architecture, 1806, p. 283Google Scholar ; Martin's evidence before Parliament upon the (then) present state of the art of Glass Painting printed in Timbs, , Popular Errors Explained, 3rd ed., 1862, p. 65Google Scholar ; Lakin's, Receipts for Pottery and Glass Painting, 1824, p. 75Google Scholar.

page 32 note 1 Art of Glass, Preface.

page 33 note 1 York Minster Fabric Rolls, Surtees Soc.

page 33 note 2 Zarco del Valle, Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de las Bellas Artes en España.

page 33 note 3 Similarly in 1351-2 coloured glass was bought ‘at Temestrete’, i.e. at the Steelyard (the warehouse of the Hanse Merchants in Thames Street) for the windows of St. George's Chapel, Windsor. But it was not made there, but had been manufactured hundreds of miles away.

page 33 note 4 Knowles, J. A., Glass-Painters of York; Notes and Queries, 12 Ser., ix, 63.Google Scholar

page 34 note 1 Knowles, J. A., Henry Gyles, Glass-Painter of York, Walpole Soc., vol. xi, p. 69.Google Scholar

page 34 note 2 Williams, Leonard, Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, vol. ii, pp. 247, 248.Google Scholar It is not perfectly clear whether these windows were of coloured glass or painted in enamels. The author describes a MS. by the above-mentioned Juan Danis, which seems to have treated of glass-painting rather than the colouring of glass in the pot.

page 34 note 3 Powell, H. J., Glass Making in England, 1923, p. 117.Google Scholar

page 35 note 1 Houdoy, E., Verrerles à la Façon de Venise, 1873, pp. 3, 31, and 59.Google Scholar There is nothing to show, however, that the above referred to coloured glass manufacture.

page 35 note 2 Archaeol. Journ., xxxiv, p. 103.

page 35 note 3 Phil. Trans., vol. i, no. 38, p. 743.