In the Womb of the Rose - Medieval Stained Glass

Glass design in the Middle Ages was an integral part of the architecture built in Northern Europe for the Christian Church. It superseded the use of mosaic Byzantine tradition of the Southern European.

The rose windows of Northern Europe, like the North Rose from Chartres Cathedral, used the craft of glass with its orchestration of light to produce an effect unparalleled in any other tradition. Light was a metaphor for transcendent reality and a symbol for the illumination of the soul by the love of God.

The glass of the early Middle Ages was designed to be seen in differing contexts. As an overall image the windows are seen from a distance as a decorative pattern. However closer to them there is a narrative in the inset panels that was used for liturgical purposes. The windows told stories from the Bible that would have been recognizable to pilgrims throughout Europe from the iconography and the setting - whatever language they spoke as they were always made in the same way.

Check the image in gray- scale by running the cursor over the picture

Water Carriers window (12th Century) Chartres Cathedral

The stories in the windows are easy to follow - medieval colour palette used strong tonal contrasts so that the small details that identify the story are easily read at a distance. Haloes and outsized heads and feet draw attention to the main features of characters. Clear glass, often used in small areas and making for outlines, was seen to add 'joyousness' to the glass. Clear (white) glass borders was used to control and define the forms of the pattern and the main focus of the panel. The tone of thee windows is what makes them legible rather than the colour - as you can see from the above detail.

There was the change in the aesthetics of stained glass that led to the making of brighter windows in the later 13th century when the earliest treatise on glass compiled by Antonio de Pisa stressed that at least a third of the coloured glass in a window should be white (i.e. clear). Below the rose window of Notre-Dame-En-Vaux (although the glass is mainly 19th century) illustrates this brighter look.

Further changes to glass aesthetics came in the later 15th centuries. Geometric structures became more organic and flowing. The use of borders and clear outlines to delineate areas of the tracery and contain narrative panels began to to decline in response to the new influences of more naturalistic, less stylized, painting.

The cheaper production of clear glass and the introduction of stain (yellow on clear glass) led to more change as the centuries progressed. The window on the right shows later glass design where larger clear glass pieces were used and less coloured. Figures and backgrounds became larger and more realistic and the borders ceased to be an important element in the overall effect of the design.

For In the Womb of the Rose, the earlier gothic style, is being used as the style guide for the project.