Ste Chappelle, Ile de la Cite, Paris
The Gothic Era
Abbot Suger's vision to illumine men's minds was helped by the innovations in architecture that later came to be known as Gothic. Flying buttresses and vaulted ceilings made it possible for a large portion of the wall space of the cathedral to be filled with glass. St. Denis was consecrated June 11, 1144 and served as a standard for new designs in stained glass that would eventually replace those of the smaller, Byzantine like Romanesque windows. Unfortunately, the windows of St. Denis were mostly destroyed during the French Revolution, although fragments and entire windows can be found throughout Europe in churches and private collections. The explosion of Gothic architecture soon after St. Denis would serve as the foundation of the art of stained glass. After the Norman conquest of England, French stained glass artists migrated to England and the earliest stained glass windows in England can be found in York Minister dating back to around 1150. Flemish and German artist were soon to follow on their heels.
Gothic architecture was a bold experiment that jettisoned Europe out of the middle ages and allowed medieval glaziers to produce visions of paradise with their glass. Northern Europe inevitably became the backdrop for the development of large walls of glass in cathedrals. The intense southern sun of Italy and Spain made the development of large scale windows impractical in those areas. Unparalleled as an example of the gothic style is Chartes Cathedral in France. Glaziers constructed windows not knowing what the outcome of their labors would look like in natural light, but created one of the most harmonious and vibrant collections of glass ever assembled. Chartes is know for its subtle variations of rich blues and reds. Over four thousand donors are depicted in the windows as well as images of everyday medieval life. The bold use of lead lines, receding blue backgrounds and stylized two-dimensional imagery are typical of the gothic style at Chartes and other gothic cathedrals.
But the development of stained glass design and production was not even throughout the middle ages. Constant war , famine, and plagues destroyed much of the original glass and often made such a large corporate endeavor unmanageable. The rise of new national identities also tended to create strong regional differences in aesthetics. Germany remained conservative and Romanesque with dark, heavy figures, while French artists developed grater animation of figures by using rapid sketching techniques. By the fourteenth century glass techniques in England had produced elaborate traceries that lifted the eyes toward heaven. English glaziers reveled in the lives of northern saints and held great fascination with the grotesque. They further developed the use of grisalle, large expanses of light colored and clear glass designed to allow the maximum penetration of light. Even amid chaotic social conditions there were many technical innovations in stained glass production during the fourteenth century. One anecdote describes the accidental discovery of silver stain. When a silver button of one of the glaziers fell onto a piece of glass during the firing process it resulted in a rich gold stain on the fired piece. The eventual application of silver oxide to glass before firing, allowed the artist to obtain rich and varied hues of gold and yellow on clear glass, a prominent feature of most late medieval glass. This most probably is the technique which gave stained glass its venerable name. Flashed glass was developed at this time, greatly increasing the artists pallet. Two layers of glass were fused together one on top of the other to produce different colors. Many refinements also occurred in the painters techniques allowing for greater variations in shading. All of these were to foreshadow the Renaissance, the development of realism, the painterly art, and the eventual diminution of the art of stained glass.
Baptism of Christ, Wimpfenim Tal , 1270
