Vidal de Canellas Offering His Text to King
- Slides: 7
Vidal de Canellas Offering His Text to King James – Illuminated Manuscript c. 1290 -1310
The Wilton Diptych; Gold Ground Panel Painting, c. 1395 -99
The Life of Saint Nicholas, Fresco, from the old parish church of Fructuosus in Bierge (Huesca) Late 13 th Century
Mosaic of Ecclesia Romana, Old St Peter’s Basilica Apse – c. 1200 AD Detail
The Life of St Vincent, c. 1245 -47, Stained Glass, The Lady Chapel of Saint-Germain des Pres (destroyed 1802)
While colored glass had long been understood as a surrogate for precious stones. Abbott Suger, (who commissioned some of the first stained glass windows and wrote about them) more than any other, transformed the cathedral into a new vision of Jerusalem, in some hope of bringing a foretaste of heaven on earth, perhaps even as a faith incentive for believers who lived in poverty. Suger wrote in his De administratione: “the multicolored loveliness of the gems has called me away…transporting me from material to immaterial things…the dull mind rises to truth through that which is material and in seeing this light is resurrected from its former submersion… Thus, out of my delight in the House of God, the loveliness of the multi-colored gems has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has caused me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial. . . These windows are very valuable on account of their wonderful execution and the profuse expenditure of sapphire and colored glass. ”
Contrary to curiously popular opinion that rendered stained glass as mere Biblia pauperum, a "Bible of the Poor", stained glass was conceived and executed as a sublime art with the highest aspirations in depiction of spiritual truths for the sophisticated as well as for the people. Stained glass was intended as a homily of great metaphysical depth (more than ‘earthly’ or ‘material concerns’) far more than simple storytelling. The color choices and patterns, allusions, heraldic devices and many other linkages also had profound meanings to be plumbed that were unlikely to be known by the illiterate; often windows told sophisticated stories and allegories deliberately using light as the medium of revelation.
