Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... THE STAINED GLASS WINDOW. [ 101, Stained Glass Windows, their Origin and History, ante, p. 265.] This is not a specially Italian form of the decorative art, but belongs rather to France and north-western Europe. A proof of this may be found in the fact that in 1436 the Florentines have to send for a worker in glass from Liibeck in Germany to make windows for their Duomo (Gave, Carteggio, n, 441 f.), while at the beginning of the next century Pope Julius II summons French verriers to supply coloured windows for the Vatican (see ante, p. 266, note). The art was differently regarded north and south of the Alps, and Vasari in his account of it gives, in 102, the tradition of the northern schools, but lets us see at the same time, in 101, how the Italians were accustomed to envisage the craft. There is accordingly in his treatment a confusion between two distinct ideals of the art, one traditional and northern, the other congenial to an Italian painter of the sixteenth century. According to the first ideal of the art, that on which it was founded and nurtured north of the Alps, it depended for its effect upon coloured glass, that is upon the varied tints of pieces of glass stained in the mass with metallic oxides, and called by the moderns 'pot metal.' These different coloured pieces were so arranged and so treated as to give the appearance of figures or ornaments, and to this extent the effect was pictorial, but such a window would depend for its beauty far more on the sumptuous display of coloured light than on any delineation of figures or objects. The sort of window which would present itself to the Italian of the Renaissance, as representing his ideal of the art, is rather a transparent picture painted on glass, in..."