52 ON COLOUR, Part I. 



of glass painting is, on the whole, the best system to be 

 adopted."— (pp. 245 and 268.) 



By the "mosaic system" I suppose he alludes to that 

 which was in vogue during the 1200, when the patterns were 

 combined with medallions, as at the Sainte-Chapelle, at 

 Auxerre, Chartres, Bourges, Sens, and other cathedrals ; as he 

 says they were " employed in this country from the earliest 

 period at which painted glass is found ;" and as he notices 

 " French medallion windows of the twelfth and thirteenth 

 centuries." — (pp. 33, 34.) These, he very properly observes, 

 were "undoubtedly the most interesting" of the "three 

 principal classes of coloured windows in this (the early 

 English) style" — the "medallion, the figure and canopy, 

 and the Jesse windows ; " and with this preference for the 

 medallion windows I fully concur. For the medallions, them- 

 selves one of the conditions is, that the drawing and compo- 

 sition of the figures should be good, even though subject in 

 their colour to conventional rules. But we must not have 

 large pictures on glass, as they sin against the very principle 

 of this kind of ornamentation, and assume a place to which 

 they have no claim. 



36. I should extend the subject too far if I were to enter into 

 the question of the form and proportion of windows and 

 their arrangement; or attempt to show how some, even in 

 France and elsewhere, fail to fulfil the proper conditions of 

 vitrochrome decoration, especially during the 1400 and 1500 

 (without coming down to more debased times); I cannot, 

 however, omit to mention the error in several circular 

 windows, of making its lights, or the patterns on them, concen- 

 tric instead of radiating from the centre ; nor can any excuse 

 be found for placing a disproportionately large rosette in the 

 upper part of a window over a series of short upright lights, 

 such as are seen in the north transept of Sens Cathedral. 

 Nor is that of the south transept much less faulty in propor- 



