NEW COLLEGE CHAPEL AND HALL, OXFORD.
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great part of the canopy hoods,[1] are of the same date as the ancient glass in the Antechapel. The glass of which these remains are composed, which in the Antechapel would seem to be white, here appears to be a positive light green, from contrast with the warm colours that surround it, and particularly from its being opposed to the warm grey or light sky-blue used as a spire back to the canopies. The founder's legend, in modern glass, is carried along the bottom of this, as well as of the other south windows.
The execution of the painting is very heavy. There are scarcely any clear lights.[2] The shadows are not stippled, but hatched as in an oil painting, and besides being always muddy are frequently too deep. The shade of the interior of the canopy niche is absolutely black. The colouring is
- ↑ It is not easy to conceive what motive could have induced Price to work up any part of the ancient materials. In reshading the old canopy hoods, so as to make them harmonise with the powerfully-shaded figures beneath, he has however shown himself a better artist than the majority of the modern imitators of ancient glass, who seldom scruple to clap a deeply shaded figure below, it cannot be said beneath, a canopy as flat in effect as the material on which it is painted actually is. This defect might be observed in many of the specimens in the late Exhibition. It seems to result from a habit of copying the figures from ancient MSS., and the canopies from ancient painted glass. For if both were alike copied from old windows, our imitators could hardly fail to observe that the medieval artists, as in the windows of the Antechapel, were wont to make both figures and canopies equally, or almost equally, flat. After all, the fault rests with the amateurs, without whose countenance such extravagancies could not be committed.
- ↑ It is difficult, no doubt, to prescribe the extent to which, in painting glass, the material may be obscured, or the high lights subdued with enamel colour, without violating the fundamental conditions of this branch of art: and I would recommend any one, who really feels an interest in the subject, to suspend his judgment until he has had an opportunity of actually examining and comparing a variety of painted windows. Without, however, attempting to lay down any rule, I think I may venture to say, that if a picture in painted glass appears to be, on the whole, as brilliant and transparent as an equal extent of plain glazing of the same date as itself, we may be sure that the obscuration of the material has not been carried too far; and if, ill addition, when considered with reference to its design, it betrays no incompleteness of effect, we may be satisfied that the obscuration of the material has been carried, quite far enough, a standard which by no means excludes all but picture-glass paintings executed in an absolutely flat manner; since it is completely attained by any good specimen of the period between 1530 and 1540, though adequately representing canopy-work, or even the interior of a building, as by the flattest Gothic picture: whilst many a modern glass painting, of the flattest possible design, such as an ornamental pattern, will be found to fall below it. It equally condemns, on the one hand, the opinion of most modern artists, that a glass painting ought to be a dull transparency; as exemplified, for instance, in the windows of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, Paris; and, as may be recollected, in the majority of the works sent to the late Exhibition; on the other hand, the abortive attempts of modern imitators of old glass, to represent canopy-hoods, and other projecting work, landscapes, &c., without the aid of shadows, linear or aerial perspective, as shown, on the whole perhaps most consistently, in the glass paintings of Messrs. Pugin and Hardman; leaving, as a matter entirely irrespective of the question at issue, the choice whether of a flat, but artistic, or more rotund manner of representation, to be determined by the good taste of the artist and the nature of the subject.
