§21,25. ORIGIN OF PAINTED GLASS. 3o 



up of pieces of stained glass, according to the colours re- 

 quired to form it. There is also a third, called the "Mosaic 

 Enamel Method," in which some portions are of stained, 

 others of coloured glass, combining the two former methods, 

 though this last distinction is not always maintained. What 

 is generally called mosaic glass has really some of its details 

 and shadows marked out by colour ; and of this kind are the 

 earliest windows of the 1100 and 1200 in France. For 

 though composed of coloured pieces of glass, held together 

 by the leads which form the outlines of the designs, the 

 shading is made by lines in bistre laid upon the surface, and 

 afterwards burnt in; and the same colour* is used for some 

 of the details and folds of draperies. 



The art gradually grew out of the original simple mosaic 

 process. But it has long been a question when and where the 

 first idea originated of adding the few shades and bistre lines ; 

 for in that was the germ of the enamel process and the real 

 origin of painted glass. 



25. In arguing this question it has been observed, on the 

 one hand, that the hard outlines formed by the lead-work and 

 the line-shading are consistent with the character of Byzan- 

 tine paintings; on the other, that those formal outlines 

 merely resulted from the mode of fixing the pieces of glass, 

 and that the Byzantine character of the figures would only 

 show that they were copied, like many early paintings, from 

 Greek models ; while some have made this more pertinent 

 remark, that if the discovery of the new art of painting on 

 glass had been made in France, it could not have been 

 unknown to Theophilus, and that he would have noticed 

 an innovation introduced about his time. 



There is, however, no need of conjecture ; and, as I have 

 already shown (p. 27), he actually states that it was practised 

 by the Byzantine Greeks. And if we find no specimens of the 



* Some bright lights were scratehed in a superadded coat of bistre. 



D 2 



