About Stained Glass

History of the stained glass

The art historians cannot explain fully the origins of stained glass art. Even if, as some of them maintain, the beginnings of stained glass can be traced down to known in the Mediterranean region alabaster ornamental window openings in which sometimes pieces of color glass were mounted, there are not known transitional stages between these primordial forms and stained glass sensu stricto.

The stained glass has appeared in architecture suddenly and already in its perfect form - artistically and technically as well. It has happened from the 10th to 11th century. About high standard of the art of stained glass speak well the oldest preserved fragments: the faces of Christ from Lorsch and Wissemburg.
The culminating point of the art of stained glass occurred in the times of building cathedrals. The artists of those days were able to discover fundamental truth that stained glass is above all the art of manipulating with light and color in an interior space. They possessed intuitive knowledge about how the colors change depending on variable light conditions and had applied this knowledge by placing windows with dominantly cold colors in the walls facing North and West and windows with mainly warm colors in eastern and southern walls.
The colors of stained glass of those years were limited to the shades of blue, red, violet and white, which dazzled with utmost intensity. The grid of lead beams which keep the pieces of glass together however being structural necessity add at the same time to the artistic expression after being submitted to the principles of composition. The artistic and religious genius of those, mostly anonymous artists, allowed to present within stained glass windows the whole world - the Universe of believing ones. From the most holy, supernatural things through allegories of nature to everyday things - the images of people at work. At the same time those stained glass windows were far from any illusoriness: Gothic rose windows - the most perfect accomplishment in the art of stained glass were explosion of light and color and as a whole they were purely abstract since presented scenes had melted into a picture of glory. Real was only the light, which was permeating and animating everything like the Divine Presence.
After some time, as the rational knowledge about the world has begun to extend over previous spiritual visions, the stained glass art has begun to loose some of its strength, luminosity and monumentality. The perfected technique of glass tinting has freed the artists, at least they thought so, of previous technical limitations. They had learned how to get few colors on one piece of glass. This skill caused that the grid of lead lines had lost its artistic meaning. The representative part has became more important for the artists. They have forgotten that the light is the very essence of stained glass art. During its decadent period (17th - 18th century) the stained glass windows lacking lead lines were painted with color enamels on color less glass. Quite often - this tendency has begun to develop during baroque period - the ordinary color glass was used for all windows in church in order to make interior lighted as much as possible.
The renascence of the art of stained glass came not earlier than in 19th century.This renascence lasts until today. What's more important, it seems that right now the artists are beginning to be fully aware of possibilities of stained glass which is liberated from the necessity of narration (or deliberately recede it to the background) and the stained glass becomes what it was in the times of its magnificence - the miracle of light entering the soul directly.
Among the great artists who practised art of stained glass we can find prominent painters like Matisse, Chagall and these, who dedicated their efforts entirely to stained glass: Patrick Reyntiens, Teresa M. Reklewska, Brian Clark, Johannes Schreiter, Ludwig Schaffrath.