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2 Style and Techniques Reading a Kempe Window It might seem easy enough to understand what audivi et vidi’ (‘And I, John, saw these things and can be seen in a Kempe window. The five-light heard them’, Revelation 22:8). east window of St John the Evangelist, Oxford Chapter 22, the conclusion of the Book of (fig. 2.i), for instance, appears simply to show Revelation, contains a description of the ‘Tree Christ on the Cross flanked in the outer lights by of Life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and twelve saints. A thirteenth sits below the Cross. yielded her fruit every month’. Accordingly, in This much is evident at first glance. But context Kempe’s window, the Tree of Life has produced always counts and in this window there is a great six strong branches that between them support deal more than meets the eye. the twelve saints in the four outer lights. These East windows conventionally depict the are (left to right, from top): Boniface, Benedict, Crucifixion, but what Kempe has designed here is a Basil, Bernard; Bede, Augustine, Aidan, Anthony; ‘Tree of Life’. The words ‘Lignum Vitae’, appearing Dominic, Columba, Francis and Bruno. There is on a scroll across the centre light, explain that the nothing random about this list. Cross has come alive; indeed, it is now green with The church of St John the Evangelist has sap and sending out shoots, branches, leaves, even never been a parish church: it was built as the bunches of grapes. In the centre of the window two community church of the Cowley Fathers, the small angels hold a framed text:SAMPLE ‘Ego sum vitis, vos Society of St John the Evangelist. Nowadays palmites’. These words of Jesus – ‘I am the vine, and it belongs to an Oxford theological college, St you are the branches’ – are recorded in St John’s Stephen’s House. The Cowley Fathers had three Gospel, and it is St John who occupies the seat of distinctive characteristics. They were the first honour at the foot of the Cross. monastic community established in Britain since The Evangelist’s feet appear to rest on grass the Reformation, so this window commemorates and rocks near the edge of the sea. This indicates the founding saints of religious orders: Anthony that St John, in his old age, is on the island the Great, ‘Father of all Monks’, then Benedict, of Patmos; here, according to tradition, he Dominic, Francis and Bruno, founder of the received the vision of the Apocalypse that he was Carthusian order. Cowley Fathers were to be instructed to record in what would become the scholars and theologians – hence the presence Book of Revelation. This is the book he props here of three ‘Doctors of the Church’: St Basil, upright on his knee, while holding a quill pen St Bernard of Clairvaux and the Venerable poised in his right hand. Another Latin text Bede. They were also to be a missionary order, appears above John’s head: ‘Ego Iohannes qui establishing houses in South Africa, India and the © 2018 The Lutterworth Press SAMPLE © 2018 The Lutterworth Press 2. Style and Techniques 41 United States. This missionary theme is reflected Now it is worth looking once more at the in the presence of St Augustine, charged by Pope window as a whole. There is almost no tracery Gregory to bring Christianity to England, of St above the five lights, so the composition is Columba who brought Christianity to Scotland remarkably uncluttered; indeed, with so much and of St Aidan, ‘the Apostle of Northumbria’. background white glass, the figures seem These three are joined by St Boniface, the suspended in space. Such restraint is appropriate English missionary and martyr credited with for a community committed to a vow of poverty, bringing Christianity to Germany. and the deeper colours of the window – Christ’s Twelve figures, therefore, variously associated billowing loincloth, for instance, and the few with religious orders, with teaching the Faith, and clusters of grapes on the vine – are the more with spreading the Gospel; Kempe always ensured striking for being rare. And yet the window the figures in his windows could be identified and has richness, too, found in the gold of St Basil’s here the name of each saint is written underneath. vestments, the bishops’ croziers, the foliage of Some also have identifying symbols: Bernard of the plinths, the tapestry behind St John and the Clairvaux, famous as a hymn writer, holds a book plumage of his eagle. open at the words ‘Jesu dulcis memoria’, the first Finally, one might expect such a window line of perhaps his best-known hymn. St Anthony to be signed with Kempe’s wheatsheaf, if not carries a leper’s bell, because he was famously with his full arms – three wheatsheaves on a red afflicted by a skin disease – sometimes still called shield, edged with gold. Not here, however; but St Anthony’s Fire. St Dominic has a bright star there is a signature, nevertheless, a symbol with shining above his forehead, a sign of his special a very personal significance for Kempe. In the saintliness first seen at his baptism. cusps at the top of the centre light sits a pelican. Kempe’s eye for historical detail is evident The crest above Kempe’s family arms showed everywhere. St Basil holds not a bishop’s crozier, a pelican pecking at a wheatsheaf, and this but the Eastern Orthodox pastoral staff topped by bird became as much his private signature as two serpents, St Columba wears not a Roman, but the wheatsheaf was his public one. The pelican a Celtic, mitre; in his arms he cradles a model of was his mark of faith – ‘Ihesus pelicanus noster’ the abbey he founded on Iona. St Boniface carries (‘Jesus our Pelican’; see Frontispiece, p.ii) – and the palm of martyrdom. At St John’s feet stands Kempe has here duly signed this window by his eagle. Usually this bird holds in its beak a scroll placing the Pelican in its Piety directly on top with the opening words of St John’s Gospel – ‘In of the Cross. principio erat verbum’; here,SAMPLE however, since the Subject, theme, figures, symbols, inscriptions emphasis is on the last words of Revelation, he and texts – all of these can help us to read simply carries the evangelist’s name. Kempe’s windows with greater insight. The Evolution of the Kempe Style Of all the themes that the Kempe Studio was called Child – the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ. on to represent in glass, none better illustrates This image is usually shown iconically – that is, Kempe’s evolving style than the Madonna and in isolation and not as part of a narrative scene. Fig. 2.i (opposite) Oxford, St John the Evangelist Church, Cowley: east window (1897). © 2018 The Lutterworth Press 42 Espying Heaven One of its earliest appearances is in Wakefield cower behind her cheek. Each appears as it were Cathedral (1874; fig. 2.ii) where Wyndham overwhelmed by thoughts of the future ahead of Hope Hughes has emphasised the vulnerability them. Jesus clutches a pomegranate, symbol of of both Mary and her child: his Madonna’s the Resurrection. hair straggles over her forehead and her gaze is By contrast, only two years later Hughes inward-looking, while the Child seems almost to returns to the subject in quite a different way: Fig. 2.ii Wakefield Cathedral (West Yorkshire): Madonna and Child, detail (1874). SAMPLE © 2018 The Lutterworth Press 2. Style and Techniques 43 at Nantwich (1876; fig. 2.iii) the Madonna and differently: although, again, his head is partly Child are shown at the top of a sumptuously hidden behind his mother’s cheek, his right hand coloured Tree of Jesse. Here Mary is crowned, as is raised in blessing, as if he has already understood Queen of Heaven, and although her gaze is again his role as Christ. Nevertheless, and now only just thoughtful, it has lost the apprehensiveness of visible, his left hand still wraps itself around his the Wakefield image. The Child, too, is shown mother’s fingers, as if for reassurance. Fig. 2.iii Nantwich (Cheshire), St Mary’s Church: Jesse Tree, detail (1876). SAMPLE © 2018 The Lutterworth Press 44 Espying Heaven An important technical contrast between time the lower part of this glass has faded and these two images is that at Wakefield the faces much of the definition of the Child’s body of Mary and her son were painted on separate and hands has been lost, while at the top the pieces of glass, the line of Mary’s cheek being richness of Mary’s crown still appears almost defined by the lead strip holding the two pieces three-dimensionally sharp. together. At Nantwich the artist determined that An instructive example of the difference the two heads and their haloes should be painted in style between Hughes and John Carter, his on the same piece of glass. Unfortunately, over successor as Kempe’s chief draughtsman, can be Fig. 2.iv Clayworth (Nottinghamshire), St Peter’s Church: Jesse Tree, detail (1891). SAMPLE © 2018 The Lutterworth Press 2. Style and Techniques 45 seen in another Jesse Tree image of the Madonna his destiny. The tenderness of their relationship and Child, at Clayworth (1891; fig. 2.iv). Here, is glimpsed this time not in the touching cheeks although Mary is not crowned as at Nantwich, her of mother and baby but in the intimate way the elaborate hair, tiara and headdress almost double thumb and finger of Mary’s left hand just clasp the size of her head.