Colour and Light

The Art of Stained Glass

Many artists over the years have chosen to work in more than one medium. Back during the Italian renaissance we know that Michelangelo was a painter, a sculptor, an architect and a poet. Leonardo da Vinci was not only a painter and sculptor but also an engineer, inventor, architect and writer. In more recent times, as well as being a painter, Pablo Picasso was also a mixed media artist with his cubist collages, a ceramicist, a print maker and theatre designer. The list goes on because for any artist the urge or desire to create and make is never limited to one medium and it is fascinating to see how artists’ skills manifest through different sets of materials. You can imagine then, how excited I was on our recent trip not to discover just one stained glass window by the Jewish Russian artist Marc Chagall but an entire church full of them.

Stained Glass by Marc Chagall, St Stephan’s Church, Mainz

Born in 1887 in Belarus, Marc Chagall became associated with early modernism, and his unique style is a mixture of Eastern European tradition and Jewish folklore. His works encompassed painting, illustration, theatre design, ceramics and tapestry. But much of his work was also in the field of stained glass and he produced windows for Reims cathedral, the Fraumünster church in Zurich, the United Nations, and the Art Institute of Chicago amongst others, as well as St. Stephan’s Church in Mainz, Germany which just happened to be one of the stops on our Rhine river cruise.

As with all our river stops, we were given a brief guided tour of Mainz by a local guide. The town was bustling with families and groups of friends out in the sunshine at a festival along the riverbank to celebrate Fathers’ Day. As we wove our way through the crowds our guide told us mostly about the Roman origins of the city and its most famous son, inventor of the modern printing press Johannes Gutenberg. He pointed out the Gutenberg Museum, which was closed due to the festival, and the magnificent Mainz Cathedral with its six red sandstone towers. It was only in passing that he mentioned a church with windows by Marc Chagall. At the end of the tour, rather than return to the ship we got out the map and found our way to St. Stephan’s Church.

The church dates back to 990 where it was founded on the highest spot in Mainz. The current building heralds back to the late medieval period and was completed between 1267 and 1340. It was heavily bombed during WWII and much of the building was destroyed but it was rebuilt to its present state in the late 1960s. The nine Chagall windows are unique in Germany and were created by the artist from 1978 until his death aged 97, in 1985. Each window is crafted in luminous blue glass and depicts scenes and scriptural figures from the Old Testament showing the shared Jewish and Christian experience. He intended his work to be part of the Jewish and German reconciliation. The windows literally glow with the blue light as angels glide ethereally in space, giving the entire interior an incandescent magical blue light. It was glorious and well worth the detour. And I do like an angel!

Examples of Chagall’s stained glass can also be seen in two locations in England. All Saints Church at Tudeley, near Tonbridge in Kent is unique in that it is the only church where all twelve windows are designed by Chagall. Initially Chagall was commissioned by her parents, to make a single commemorative window in memory of Sarah d’Aigdor-Goldsmid, who died in a sailing accident aged just 21. He was reluctant to take on the commission but on seeing the church he declared “It’s magnificent, I will design them all” Over the next fifteen years he designed all twelve windows in the church, which are the only ones anywhere that can be seen at eye level.

The East Window, All Saints Church, Tudeley

It was the windows at Tudeley along with those at the Hebrew Medical School in Jerusalem that inspired the then dean of Chichester Cathedral, Walter Hussey to approach Chagall to make a window for the Cathedral. At the time he refused the commission as he was too busy but when Hussey approached him again six years later in 1975 he accepted. The window is an interpretation of Psalm 150 also known as The Song of Praise and features numerous birds and animals joining in the praise. It is unusual among Chagall windows in that it is predominantly red.

The Chagall window, Chichester Cathedral

Of course, Chagall is not the only artist to have turned his skill to designing stained glass. Most famously Henri Matisse, also designed not only the glass but also every detail of The Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence in the Cote D’Azure, from the architecture, the murals, the vestments and of course the windows. The project came about after Matisse was diagnosed with stomach cancer aged 72. He advertised for “a young and pretty nurse” to care for him during his treatment and despite the abhorrent misogynist and sexist nature of the request, his call was answered by Monique Bourgois. The pair struck up a friendship whilst he was in her care, and she even posed for some of his paintings. After his recovery, Monique joined a convent in Vence and to show his gratitude for her care, Matisse became involved in planning a chapel for the convent, which is still in use by the nuns today. It took four years to build, and although Matisse was not religious he paid meticulous detail to every aspect of the space.

Matisse and his floor to ceiling windows ‘The Tree of Life’ in the chapel at Vence

There are three sets of stained glass windows, inspired by the Book of Revelation, for which Matisse limited himself to just three colours, creating a calm yet vibrant intensity. There is yellow representing the sun, green for the lush vegetation and a vivid blue to show the colour of the Mediterranean Sea and the clear blue Riviera sky. It was about this time, due to the fact that his illness had left him chair bound and unable to manipulate paint at an easel that Matisse turned to cutting out sheets of paper pre-painted with gouache to create a form of collage. And it was this technique that he used to design the windows:

“Those are stained-glass colours. I cut the gouache paper as one cuts glass; it is just that, there, the colours are arranged to reflect the light, whereas for the stained glass they must be arranged so that the light comes through them.”

More recently David Hockney was commissioned to design a window for Westminster Abbey to celebrate the reign of Elizabeth II, which was unveiled in September 2018. The vibrantly coloured contemporary stained glass is called The Queen’s Window and replaced one of the few remaining clear windows in the Abbey. It depicts blue skies and a red path meandering through blossoming Yorkshire Hawthorn. In Hockney’s words, the window:

“It reflects the Queen as a countrywoman and her widespread delight in, and yearning for, the countryside”

David Hockney and The Queen’s Window, Westminster Abbey

Like Matisse, as he has aged, Hockney has also embraced a different way of working using his iPad to produce paintings and The Queen’s Window was designed on his iPad, which as Hockney claims “it is backlit like a window, it is a natural thing to use.”

As yet I haven’t seen the Hockney window in Westminster Abbey, nor Matisse’s windows in France or the two examples of Chagall’s work in England but it’s nice to have a list of places I would like to visit in future.

Until next week, if you have enjoyed reading please do share and tell other people, hit the like button, leave me a comment and if you are not already a subscriber, it would be lovely if you considered subscribing. Thank you!