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1996

Saint-Denis Abbey: Stained Glass

Michael Watt Cothren Swarthmore College, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Michael Watt Cothren. (1996). "Saint-Denis Abbey: Stained Glass". The Dictionary Of Art. Volume 27, 548-549. https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-art/103

This work is brought to you for free by Swarthmore College Libraries' Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art & Art History Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 548 Saint-Denis Abbey, §11, 2(ii): Tomb sculpture, after c. 1500

(LiUich). Despite the effects of the Revolution and a series of 19th-century restorations, more glass, and better doc­ umentation, survive from the ambulatory of Suger’s 12th- century church, enabling some evaluation of Ae signifi­ cance of this glazing within the history of medieval art. Glazing played an unprecedentedly influential role in the design of Suger’s church, especially in the ambulatory. Here for the first time stained glass became an important feature, perhaps the most important feature, of an archi­ tectural environment. In Suger’s record of his administra­ tion, some of his most rhapsodic commentary praises the pervasiveness of coloured light in the building. He de­ scribes the manner in which the choir shone ‘with the wonderful and uninterrupted light of most sacred win­ dows, pervading the interior beauty’ (Panofsky, p. 101). Suger admired the windows not principally for their beauty but for the way in which their luminosity could help the viewer to approach God through the contemplation of light. These windows survive only in fragmentary condition. Although most of the glass was spared during the Revo­ lution, what survived soon left the abbey for Alexandre Lenoir’s Musee des Monuments Franpais in Paris. Nu­ merous unexhibited panels were sold but those included in the museum were returned to the abbey in 1817-18. Most remained to be transformed in two heavy-handed restorations, incorporated within the mid-19th-century neo-Gothic windows now in the ambulatory. Some of the best-preserved panels are now in European and American museums (e.g. Bryn Athyn, PA, Glencairn Mus.; Champs- sur-Marne, Chateau; Glasgow, Burrell Col.; London, St Andre-des-Arts, Paris, Louis XIII (including four V&A; Paris, Mus. Cluny; Raby Castle, Durham). All the cherubs by Jacques Sarazin), Louis XIV (the King was remains considered in conjunction facilitate the recon­ depicted on a medallion by Franpois Girardon, surrounded struction of the design and stylistic character of the most by mourners executed by Hubert Le Sueur and trophies prominent windows, and a partial assessment of the by Etienne Le Hongre) and Louis XV (represented by a original iconographic programme. sole surviving fragment—a ChariPf sculpted by Jean- Suger refers to the Jesse Tree window by name and GuiUaume Moitte), as well as a marble bust of Louis describes the Moses and ‘Anagogical’ windows in some AV7/7executed by AchiUe Valois (1785-1862). detail. Fortunately, portions of all three have survived at BIBLIOGRAPHY the abbey. The ‘Anagogical’ and Moses windows (now in Li Rot, la sculpture et la mort: Gisants et tomheaux de la basilique de Saint- the St Peregrinus Chapel) must have originally formed a Denis (exh. cat. by A. Erlande-Brandcnburg and others, Saint-Denis, diptych occupying both openings of a single chapel, as Maison Cult., 1976) [with earlier bibliog.] G. Bresc-Bautier: Tombeaux factices de Pabbatiale de Saint-Denis ou Part they do today. The former outlines an allegorical means d’accommoder les testes’. Bull. Sot. N. Antiqua. France (1980-81), of interpreting Old Testament events in the light of New pp. 114-27 Testament truths, an ‘Anagogical’ method apparently B. Hocbsteder Meyer: ‘Jean Perrealand Portraits of Louis XII’,/. Walters devised by Suger from the writings of St Paul, with the ^.G;,xl(1982),pp. 41-56 ----- : ‘Leonardo’s “Batde of Angbiati”: Proposals for Some Sources and purpose of urging the viewer, as he says, ‘onward from a Reflection’, A. Bull., Ixvi (1984), pp. 367-82 the material to the immaterial’. In the adjacent window C. Grodecki: Documents du minutier central des notaires de Paris: Histoire {see Stained glass, fig. 8), this method is employed in de I'artauXVLe siecle, 1540-1600, ii (Paris, 1986) presenting the life of Moses, the interpretative burden PHILIPPE ROUILLARD resting heavily on rather lengthy inscriptions. The personal III. Stained glass. iconographic statements represented in these windows were each unique. The Jesse window, however, initiated a Little remains of the abbey’s important and influential long series of a similar design portraying this royal and medieval glazing. The windows of the Rayonnant choir prophetic genealogical theme. At Saint-Denis the Jesse and nave, probably the most important 13th-century window again seems to have formed one wing of an ensemble in the Paris region before the glazing of the iconographic diptych, this one concentrating on the Incar­ Sainte-Chapelle, were destroyed in the Revolution. They nation and presumably installed originally, as now, in the are documented only in a sketch, one of a series (Com- axial Virgin Chapel. The companion window, devoted to piegne, Mus. Mun. Vivenel) made in 1794-5 by Charles the Infancy of Christ (see fig. 9), includes in Annunci­ Percier, and the reliability of even this has been challenged ation scene a portrait of Suger himself, prostrate at the Saint-Denis Abbey, §IV; Treasury 549

The gracefully attenuated figural proportions and decora­ tive richness of drapery patterns also separate his work from the squat, stiff, schematic figures used by the other two artists. The materials with which the artists worked are remarkably consistent from window to window, sug­ gesting that they may have been members of a single workshop. BIBLIOGRAPHY B. de Montfaucon: Les Monumens de la monarchiefranfoise, i (Paris, 1729), pp. 277, 384-97, plsxxiv-xxv, 1-liv t '/i''.- i '''' E. Panofsky: Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis and its Art Treasures (Princeton, 1946; ed. G. Panofsky-Soergel, rev. 2/1979), i pp.73,101 mI "'K L. Grodecki: ‘Les Vitraux allegoriques de Saint-Denis’, A Fr., i (1961), pp. 19-46 K. Hoffmann: ‘Sugers “Anagogisches Fenster” in Saint-Denis’, Wallraf- Richartoijb., xxx (1968), pp. 57-88 L. Grodecki: Les Vitraux de Saint-Denis: Etude sur le vitrail au Xlleme siecle, Corp. Vitrearum Med. Aevi (Paris, 1976) ___ : Tes Vitraux de Saint-Denis: Histoire et restitution, Corp. Vitrearum Med. Aevi (Paris, 1976) [with references to earlier bibliog.] f / h ----- : Le Vitrail roman (Fribourg, 1977), pp. 91-103 ,H \ /*■ ? J. Hayward: ‘Stained Glass at Saint-Denis’, The RoyalAbby of Saint-Dents \f1\ in the Time of Abbot Suger (exh. cat., ed, S. McK. Crosby and others; New York, Met., 1981), pp. 60-99 M. P. LiUich: ‘Monastic Stained Glass: Patronage and Style’, Monastiasm 9. Saint-Denis Abbey, Flight into Egupt, stained glass, 520x500 mm, and the Arts, ed. T. G. Verdon (Syracuse, NY, 1984), pp. 207-54 detail from the Infancy of Christ window, e. 1140—45; ornamental E. A. R. Brown and M.W.Cothren: ‘The Twelfth-century Crusadit^ border is modem (Bryn Athyn, PA, Glencairn Museum) Window of the Abbey of Saint-Denis: “Praeteritorum enim recordatio futurorum est exhibitio”’ ['The recollection of the past is a guarantee of the future],/. Warb. & Court. Inst, xlix (1986), pp. 1^0 M. H, Caviness: ‘Suger’s Stained Glass at Saint-Denis: The State of Virgin’s feet. Only three fragmentary scenes from this Research’, Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium: New York, window remain at Saint-Denis, but the Percier drawings 1986, pp. 257-72 and ten other panels in public and private collections M. W. Cothren: ‘The Infancy of Christ Window from the Abbey of St- permit a full reconstruction of its original appearance. Denis: A Reconsideration of its Design and Iconography’, A. Bull., lxviii(1986),pp. 398-420 In addition to these four windows with secure Sugerian L. Grodecki: ‘The Style of the Stained Glass Windows of Saint-Denis , associations, subjects depicted in two others from the Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium: New York, I986,pp. 273- ambulatory can be confidently identified: a St Benedict 81 . , , window, drawn by Percier, can be assembled from nine M. W.Cothren: ‘Suger’s Stained Glass Masters and their Workshop at Saint-Denis’, Paris: Center of Artistic Enlightenment, ed. G. Manner and fragments in French and English collections (Christ­ others. Papers in the History of Art from the Pennsylvania State church, Dorset, Borough Council; Fougeres, St Leonard; University, iv (University Park, PA, 1988), pp. 46-75 Paris, Mus. Cluny; Raby Castle, Durham ;Twycross, Leics, ___ ; ‘Is the Tlte Gerente from Saint-Denis?’,/ Glass Stud., xxxv (1993), St James). From a window devoted to the theme of pp.57-64 L. Grodecki: Etudes sur les vitraux de Suger d Saint Denis, Nile siecle. crusading, two medallions have survived (Bryn Athyn, PA, Corpus Vitrearum, France Etudes, iii (Paris, 1995) Glencairn Mus.). Drawings of 12 comparable roundels, MICHAEL W. COTHREN now lost, were published by Montfaucon in 1729. This window, however, may not have been installed until 1158, during the abbacy of Suger’s successor, Odo of Deuil. IV. Treasury. As recorded by Suger, the windows were made by ‘many The treasury of Saint-Denis was the richest in France. masters from different regions’ (Panofsky, p. 73). Two Known from inventories (abridged of 1504, detailed of painters collaborated on both the Infancy and Crusading 1534 and 1634) and the engravings of Felibien, it disap­ windows, and the hand of one of them can also be peared almost entirely at the Revolution, with the excep­ discerned in the ‘Anagogical’, Moses and Jesse Tree tion of the objects set aside in 1791 for the BibHotheque windows. They are most clearly differentiated through the Nationale, Cabinet des MedaiUes and in 1793 for the use of quite distinct formulae for facial articulation. Louvre. Moreover, one artist was a fussy painter, employing short, As royal mausoleum and official custodian of the regalia, precise strokes to build up the considerable detail with the abbey benefited continuously from gifts by the French which he executed all features of his compositions. His sovereigns. Already mentioned by Gregory of Tours in painting technique seems to coincide with the brittle the 6th century, the riches assembled round the tomb of angularity of his style. His collaborator used longer, St Denis were increased by the benefactions of King broader, bolder and more fluid brushstrokes, which rein­ Dagobert (the cross of St Eligius; Paris, Bib. N.), of Pepin force the confident, curvilinear economy of his style. A the Short (t¥^ 751-68), Queen Bertrade and especially third seems to have been responsible for the St Benedict Emperor Charles the Bald, who was lay abbot of the window. His fluid and assured painting is distinguished by monastery from 867 to 877 (‘Escrin de Charlemagne the use of a facial formula mixing a bold, schematic outline (destr.), ‘Coupe des Ptolemees’, serpentine paten; Paris, with considerable detail of features (especially facial hair). Bib. N., and Paris, Louvre; cross, golden altar frontal.