§ 20. COLOURED GLASS WINDOWS. 27 



coloured glass ; particularly in reference to its employment 

 for windows in Grothic churches. 



Among; the various kinds of coloured ornamentation, which 

 have justly claimed attention at the present day, are glass 

 windows ; and great advances have been made in the manu- 

 facture, as well as in the arrangement, of painted glass for our 

 churches. We have fortunately many excellent examples 

 remaining of this kind of decoration, especially in the ec- 

 clesiastical buildings of France ; and the specimens of dif- 

 ferent periods are such as to enable us to judge of the effects 

 and merits of their various styles, and to determine which 

 are most eligible as our guides. France was long noted for 

 its superiority in painted glass windows ; and already in 

 the time of Theophilus, who flourished according to the 

 most satisfactory evidence " in the Xllth century," France 

 was the country which had then made the greatest advance- 

 ment in this species of ornamentation. For in enumerat- 

 ing in his Preface the various subjects he is about to treat 

 of in his work, " Diver sarum Artium Schedula," he assigns 

 to Greece * the superiority in the kinds and mixtures of 

 divers colours (as well as in the manufacture of the brightest 

 transparent coloured glass cups, in glazing pottery with 

 vitrifiable colours by the action of fire and enamelling, and in 

 various processes of ornamental glass-work: — ii. 14, 16); to 

 Tuscany, in various kinds of enamel ; to Arabia, in malleable, 

 or fusible, and chased, work ; to Italy, in the variety of vases, 

 the decoration with gold, and the carving of gems and ivory ; 

 to France, in the precious variety of windows ; and to 

 Germany, in the delicate workmanship of gold, silver, copper, 

 iron, wood, and stone. 



* Art among the Byzantine Greeks is said to have fallen "in the 8th, 9th, 

 and 10th centuries," and to have " improved again under the Comncni in the 

 12th century." (Lord Lindsay, ii. p. 54.) Thus the mosaics of S. Apollinare 

 at Kavcnna, of the middle of the 500, are better than those of S. Mark's of 

 the 900, and the following century. 



