Gothic Stained Glass

The medieval Church was the most important patron of the arts. Having made that statement, the name of the single person who most personifies this concept must immediately follow: Abbot Suger of Saint Denis, the royal abbey located just outside Paris. Suger was a fellow student and friend to King Louis VI, minister of Louis VII, and regent during the second crusade. His writings show him to have been a shrewd businessman, a politician with a genius for detail, and a devoted servant to his king. Suger reformed and rebuilt the abbey and augmented its wealth. As its treasures increased, many pilgrims told stories of it and its influence spread. Suger was guided by a philosophy including the mysticism of light; this philosophy compelled him to enlarge the windows and beautify them with colored glass.

Window subject treatment grew during the Gothic period, expanding from simple figures to a complex iconography fully understood by only a few experts today. This iconography made use of symbolism based on bestiaries which can be called "unnatural history" and on complicated typology (Old Testament stories that symbolize New Testament events). Today, scholars study these windows to learn about the daily life of the time. Guilds of workmen donated windows that included likenesses of themselves engaged in their businesses. The appearance of heraldry in the windows demonstrates the increasing importance of secular families.

This time saw the formation of new religious orders that needed new buildings. Many cathedrals and churches were built. The relationship between Saint Denis and Chartres is well established through a similarity of style and iconography. Stained glass historians today re-trace the work of traveling studios. Suger wrote, "Moreover we caused to be painted by the exquisite hands of many masters from different regions, a splendid variety of new windows both below and above: from that first one which begins with the Tree of Jesse in the chevet of the church to that which is installed above the principal door of the church's entrance." The latter was a petalled rose window, the first of its kind. A Jesse Tree window was soon after installed in Chartres.

As the studios traveled from job site to job site, they took sketches and models along with their tools. The windows in Laon Cathedral show the influence of the Ingeborg Psalter.

Le Mans Cathedral, Amiens Cathedral, Beauvais and some Canterbury stained glass is stylistically similar to the Paris-Chartres school. Although the cathedral is a contemporary of Chartres, the windows of Bourges are more archaic. Although Chartres' stained glass depends chiefly upon reds and blues, in Bourges, pure whites, yellows and greens are prominent.

The Gothic style was also developing outside France. The stained glass in the cathedral of Lausanne, Switzerland shows a marked French influence. Stained glass craftsmen from France are known to have worked at Canterbury in England, as did the French architect, William of Sens. French influence can be seen in Spanish stained glass of this time, especially in Aragon, Toledo and Castille. The windows in Leon Cathedral are significant although greatly restored.

In Germany, the Romanesque style endured longer than in other areas. Notable windows are in Cologne and Strasbourg Cathedrals and the Franciscan Monastery of Konigsfelden.

The international Gothic style came late to Vienna and Prague. The earliest remaining glass in Italy, in Assisi, is the work of German glaziers. The oculus in the Cathedral of Siena is called the "first modern window" because the subjects are treated as separate scenes. The window is a circle with a metal grid structure, rather than stone mullions, dividing it into petals. By the end of the medieval period, (the second quarter of the fourteenth century), perspective and volume were becoming evident. Subject was more pictorial and not subservient to the architecture.

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