Stained Glass Works and the Stories They Tell

"The Virgin Mary and Five Standing Saints above Predella Panels," 1440–1446, by unknown German artist. Pot-metal glass, white glass, vitreous paint, silver stain; each window 12 feet, 4 1/2 inches by 2 feet, 4 1/4 inches. The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Public Domain

Since ancient Rome, stained glass windows have been valued for their beauty. With the creation of sacred windows in houses of worship, this art form reached its peak during the Middle Ages, inspiring the faithful with luminous narratives. As the centuries progressed, stained glass became a fixture in private homes, was later revived, and eventually entered museum collections worldwide.

To make stained glass, sand and wood ash are first mixed and melted into a liquid that, when cooled, becomes glass. To create glass with color, specific powdered metals are added to the mixture while it is in a molten state. For the creation of a stained glass panel, pieces of colored glass are placed over a design drawn on a board. Further assembly requires that the edges of the glass be fitted into cames (strips of lead) and then soldered together to fortify the window.

Memoirs of St. Germain

"Vision of Saint Germain of Paris," 1245–47, by unknown French artist. Pot-metal glass, vitreous paint; 25 1/8 inches by 15  3/4 inches. The Cloisters Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain

The medieval stained glass panel “Vision of Saint Germain of Paris” comes from the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. This powerful Parisian Benedictine abbey was founded in the sixth century and later named in honor of St. Germain. Germain was born in Burgundy and went on to become the bishop of Paris. One of his great achievements was to persuade the worldly Merovingian King Childebert I to lead a more Christian life. As a result, Germain helped Childebert sponsor the building of the great abbey.

Titular saints of abbeys are often depicted in stained glass. This panel is from a cycle of scenes about St. Germain’s life and miracles. It was created from 1245 to 1247 and was housed in the abbey’s Lady Chapel. While the chapel is no longer extant, the abbey’s church still stands on the famous Boulevard Saint Germain.

“Vision of Saint Germain of Paris” depicts a posthumous miracle by St. Germain in which Germain, the figure with a red halo, appears as a vision in a monk’s dream to warn of an impending Norman invasion of the abbey, along with the reassurance that his relics will remain unharmed. The monk, with an ashen face, turns away from the figure. The panel’s composition is dominated by the two figures and the richly saturated blue background, contrasted by lines and masses of red. The rest of the scene is minimally detailed, which effects an otherworldly tone.

The invasion that the saint is forewarning did actually happen, but the Abbey of Saint Germain-des-Prés survived and flourished throughout the Middle Ages, becoming one of the richest and most powerful monasteries in all of France up until the French Revolution.

In 1791, the abbey’s Merovingian tombs, which included King Childebert’s, were vandalized by the revolutionary regime. Religious buildings that survived the mobs were used as regime offices, prisons, barracks, or were leased to businesses. The Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés was closed and transformed into a refinery for the making of saltpeter, an explosive chemical component of gunpowder.

Dramatically, the storage room for this material exploded in 1794, causing several windows in the Lady Chapel to suffer damage. It is unclear whether this stained glass panel was removed before or after the explosion, but in either case it survived and was moved to a storehouse specifically for art displaced from religious buildings. Some of the stained glass panels of the Abbey of Germain-des-Prés later returned to an ecclesiastical setting or ended up in private collections and museums. This panel is now part of The Met Cloisters’ collection and is on permanent display in a Gothic-style window case that fittingly evokes its original presentation.

Renaissance Interior Designs

"Heraldic Panel With the Arms of the Eberler Family," circa 1490, by unknown maker. Pot-metal, flashed, and colorless glass, vitreous paint, and silver stain, lead came; 17 5/16 inches by 12 3/16 inches. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Public Domain

Ecclesiastical stained glass windows continued to flourish in Renaissance Europe. As glass became more affordable in the late 1400s, glass windows became more common in domestic architecture—with stained glass being a popular decorative accessory. Examples of such glass are noted for their use of color, light, and even humor. Standard subjects include signs of the zodiac, sacred scenes, portraits, and heraldry.

The late-15th-century Swiss “Heraldic Panel Showing the Eberler Family Arms,” now part of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection, was likely made for a private home. The panel is highly sophisticated due to the complex technical skills employed in the making of the glass as well as the superb artistic application of silver stain and vitreous paint. This specialized paint is composed of glass particles in a liquid binder that melt and fuse with a glass panel during firing.

The Getty panel shows a family coat of arms along with a beautiful maiden armed with a sheathed dagger. She wears a patterned blue dress, long gloves, a gold belt, necklace, rings, and a long white veil attached to a sumptuous headdress. Similar to “Vision of Saint Germain of Paris,” the composition shows one figure turned away from another. In this panel, though, the figurative pair consists of a maiden and a menacing red boar, an animal that is the heraldic motif of the Basel family Eberler. They are layered on top of a damask-patterned ground, a much more detailed background than the medieval minimalism of the Saint Germain panel.

The family’s coat of arms shown at the bottom of the panel encompasses a shield with the symbolic boar on a patterned gold ground, a helmet, and the dense decoration of red and gold curled leaves. A frieze at the upper part of the panel shows a landscape with a group of young men and women engaged in falconry: a hunting sport using birds of prey that was an activity associated with courtly flirtations. Decorative birds adorn the sides of the panel, connecting all of the scenic divisions.

Victorian Gothic Revival

"Saint Cecilia," circa 1900, by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Stained and painted glass; 84 1/16 inches by 29 3/4 inches. Princeton University Art Museum. Public Domain

In Victorian England, an interest in medieval architecture and art was revived, and the corresponding Gothic Revival style in architecture reinvigorated the market for stained glass. One of the era’s greatest designers in this medium was Sir Edward Burne-Jones, a member of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and a distinguished painter of religious, mythical, and literary scenes.

The Pre-Raphaelites were inspired by artists working before the time of Raphael, especially medieval craftsmen and their imagery of nature. William Morris, a leader in the English Arts and Crafts movement, applied these ideas to the decorative arts, founding a firm with his Oxford friend Burne-Jones to produce stained glass, tapestries, wallpaper, and other objects.

Burne-Jones created an estimated 750 stained glass designs in his lifetime. His acclaimed St. Cecilia design from the storied Burne-Jones and Morris collaboration was especially popular and was used to create nearly 30 windows over many years. The version that now resides in the collection of the Princeton University Art Museum (circa 1900) may have originally been installed in a private dining room or entertainment area.

The latter would have been a melodious setting given that St. Cecilia is the patron saint of music and has an attribute of an organ. She was an early Christian Roman martyr, and Burne-Jones depicts her in this window playing a 15th-century version of a portable organ. The museum notes in its “Handbook” entry that the “flat, abstracted, linear style and the wilting pose of the impossibly tall, graceful woman make reference to the work of Botticelli, … while the tapestry-like screen of pomegranate trees and fruits and the rich patterned brocade fabric recall the latest Gothic phase of Italian art.” Rich colors, patterned textiles, and foliate motifs are used to dazzling effect, as in “Heraldic Panel Showing the Eberler Family Arms.” Burne-Jones masterfully evokes the style of medieval and Early Renaissance stained glass creations in his innovative style.

Burne-Jones is critically commended for his rarified ability to convey emotion and personality in stained glass despite the medium’s restrictions. St. Cecilia illustrates Morris’s dictum that it is crucial for artists to use bright colors in all stained glass designs. The window showcases his belief that figures should be simply composed so that they can be comprehended by a viewer at a great distance. The work also reflects the artist’s view that cames contribute to a stained glass window’s overall beauty.

All three of these stained glass objects are representative of their production era as well as being exemplary works of art. Digging deep into their glassy façades, beyond their lush colors and forms, reveals their connections to religious worship, scientific techniques and innovations, as well as artistic movements. They are windows that illuminate history and continue to enthrall viewers today with their beauty and storytelling.