Stained Glass in England During the Middle Ages by Marks Richard;

Author:Marks, Richard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

8

The International Style

c.1350–1450

The century spanned by this chapter witnessed a transformation in both stained glass and architecture. Long before the middle of the fifteenth century the elaborate designs of Decorated windows had been supplanted by a grid pattern of mullion and transom and tracery had been reduced in both size and prominence. During the same period new styles of glass-painting evolved in line with other forms of pictorial art and sculpture. Some glaziers were in the forefront of these developments, notably towards the end of the century when they were to be found amongst the first exponents of the International Gothic style, mingling indigenous features with ideas absorbed from the Continent. In contrast with the first half of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, when the closest links were with France, now the principal source of inspiration appears to have been the Holy Roman Empire. It is in this period that the survival of both glazing commissions and their documentation for the first time makes it possible to trace the careers and development of some of the leading craftsmen. Hand in hand with the introduction of novel stylistic and design traits went a transformation in colour. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the earth colours and flesh tones common in Decorated glass for the most part had been supplanted by brighter combinations, principally blue and red, in association with a greater prominence given to white glass and liberal use of yellow stain.

The years between c. 1350 and 1380 come as an anticlimax after the achievements of York, Wells, Ely and Tewkesbury. Glass from these decades is scarce and even allowing for destruction there is little evidence of large glazing schemes, apart from the Gloucester east window, the royal chapel at Windsor and the completion of St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, at the beginning of the period. A parallel dearth of material is apparent in manuscript illumination and the general down-turn in artistic activity is probably connected with the ravages of the Black Death, of which there were severe outbreaks in England in 1348–9 and again in 1361, 1362 and 1369.1 The issuing of a writ for the collection of craftsmen to carry out the St Stephen’s Chapel glazing in no fewer than twenty-seven counties suggests that the glaziers’ craft was affected by this catastrophe.2 Other circumstances may also have contributed to the situation, including the fact that the rebuilding programmes embarked upon by so many of the great cathedrals and monastic establishments from the end of the thirteenth century had been very largely completed by c. 1350. Another (and much less certain) factor could have been the decline in the prosperity of manorial landowners which had begun before 1350, coupled with Edward III’s war taxation and levies on wool.3

In the decades 1350–70 the trend towards the increased use of white glass and yellow stain at the expense of pot metal colours accelerated. In many windows coloured glass was relegated to backgrounds behind figures. Possibly the decline in the use of

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