Home Encyclopedia Summa Fathers ... S > Stained Glass A B C D ... Z Stained Glass The popular name for the glass used in the making of coloured windows. The term is a misnomer, as stained glass is only one of the glasses so employed. It is more the result of a process than a glass per se, as it is produced by painting upon any glass, clear or coloured, with the oxide of silver, which penetrates the glass when subjected to heat and gives a yellowish reaction. In building a coloured window a variety of glass can be used, but usually there is only one kind employed, viz.: pot- metal, a glass that is coloured throughout its substance while in a molten state. This is used either directly or after it has been toned, or ornamented, or made a background for a figure subject by painting the same upon it with vitrifiable pigments, fused to its surface or incorporated with its substance by the means of heat. Nevertheless, although the word stained-glass is inaccurately used, usage has so fixed its erroneous meaning in the public mind that in all probability it will continue for all time to be applied in naming coloured windows and their glass. Christianity The oldest painted picture-window that has survived the action of time is one representing the Ascension in the cathedral of Le Mans, which is believed by many antiquarians to be a work of the late eleventh century. The glass composing it is very beautiful, more particularly the browns, which are rich in tone, the rubies, which are brilliant, streaked and studded with gemlike blobs of black, and the blues, which are of a greenish azure hue, while the general colour treatment is extremely oriental. The drawing of the figures is most effective, although simple in line, and Byzantine in character, differing in this point from those at St. Denis, which are Romanesque. The painting is peculiar in that the hair of the figures is rendered in solid black, and not in lines. Although Le Mans was one of the first places where windows made by the new process were used, yet it did not become the centre of work; the city of Chartres took the lead, and became the greatest of the schools of | |
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