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HEAD OF CHRIST
Stained Glass Window
Abbey Church of Saint Peter and
Saint Paul, Wissembourg
11th - 12th century
The Head of Christ
All that is charming about provincial France is epitomized in the tiny village of Wissembourg, found on northeast point of Alsace, on the German border where hills become mountains. The town’s name means "white castle," and it is an agricultural village, rich with folk music and steeped in tradition. This fairy tale town is home to the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, which is the second largest church in Alsace.1 It is here, in Wissembourg at the Church of St. Peter and Paul where you would have found a painted stained glass window of the Head of Christ.
This eleventh century stained glass window shows the detail and distinct technique that painted glass has to offer. To put into simplest terms the art of glass painting consists of manipulating a colorless mud on the surface of colored glass in such a way as to break up, mute, or altogether block in places the light that comes through it. Effective glass painting presupposes and completes a viable organization of all the other elements - colors, leadlines, bars and mullions that must function visually as well structurally.2 The paint used for this is a relatively colorless vitreous enamel composed if dense brownish, blackish or gray-greenish metal oxides and ground glass mixed with some purely temporary aqueous glue binder like gum arabic. This glass paint can be applied either opaquely or in thin film, to overlay the basic color of the glass with a purely tonal shading.3 In the Wissembourg Head of Christ, artists confined themselves to the more or less rudimentary smear shading, however it was often modulated much more subtly than it is in this panel.4 In the example of the fifteenth century head of St. James (image attachment), the enlarged image details of the piece shows the glass that seems to have been stripped overall with some slight deepening of the shadow areas. The sharp highlights were evidently scratched into the halftone last of all, since they cut through even the line drawing in several places.5
There are many similar heads of Christ, but none as well know and as complete as the Head of Christ from the Abbey Church of Saint Peter, Wissembourg. It is believed that "because of their size and their aspect -- that is, with the heads forward like the icon called the Panto crater, as well as the lack of any fragments showing bodies ... that these heads were displayed as icons in the middle of windows in which they would have been the only painted elements."6
The appearance of the windows in the twelfth century read as light on dark, while at the edges they read as dark on light; and in the presence of the actual panel this reversal of values have no fixed position but simply play with the light and shade from the outside.7 The way the Head of Christ from Wissembourg is painted suggests that the glass painters of the twelfth century must have been perfectly aware of this phenomenon, for if viewed against a comparably variegated background, its unpainted areas and its halftones would produce a similar effect.8
The beauty of the Wissembourg Head of Christ stained glass window is emphasized and conveyed through the detailed technique of glass painting. This piece of art is a valuable contribution to the artwork of the 12th century.
NOTES
1. stainedglass.com 1995.
2. Sowers, Robert 1965, p. 47.
3. Ibid., p. 34.
4. Ibid., p. 50.
5. Iblid.
6.Stained Glass Association of America 1996, paragraph 11.
7. Sowers, Robert 1965, p.47.
8. Ibid., p.49.
Stained Glass Window
Abbey Church of Saint Peter and
Saint Paul, Wissembourg
11th - 12th century
The Head of Christ
All that is charming about provincial France is epitomized in the tiny village of Wissembourg, found on northeast point of Alsace, on the German border where hills become mountains. The town’s name means "white castle," and it is an agricultural village, rich with folk music and steeped in tradition. This fairy tale town is home to the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, which is the second largest church in Alsace.1 It is here, in Wissembourg at the Church of St. Peter and Paul where you would have found a painted stained glass window of the Head of Christ.
This eleventh century stained glass window shows the detail and distinct technique that painted glass has to offer. To put into simplest terms the art of glass painting consists of manipulating a colorless mud on the surface of colored glass in such a way as to break up, mute, or altogether block in places the light that comes through it. Effective glass painting presupposes and completes a viable organization of all the other elements - colors, leadlines, bars and mullions that must function visually as well structurally.2 The paint used for this is a relatively colorless vitreous enamel composed if dense brownish, blackish or gray-greenish metal oxides and ground glass mixed with some purely temporary aqueous glue binder like gum arabic. This glass paint can be applied either opaquely or in thin film, to overlay the basic color of the glass with a purely tonal shading.3 In the Wissembourg Head of Christ, artists confined themselves to the more or less rudimentary smear shading, however it was often modulated much more subtly than it is in this panel.4 In the example of the fifteenth century head of St. James (image attachment), the enlarged image details of the piece shows the glass that seems to have been stripped overall with some slight deepening of the shadow areas. The sharp highlights were evidently scratched into the halftone last of all, since they cut through even the line drawing in several places.5
There are many similar heads of Christ, but none as well know and as complete as the Head of Christ from the Abbey Church of Saint Peter, Wissembourg. It is believed that "because of their size and their aspect -- that is, with the heads forward like the icon called the Panto crater, as well as the lack of any fragments showing bodies ... that these heads were displayed as icons in the middle of windows in which they would have been the only painted elements."6
The appearance of the windows in the twelfth century read as light on dark, while at the edges they read as dark on light; and in the presence of the actual panel this reversal of values have no fixed position but simply play with the light and shade from the outside.7 The way the Head of Christ from Wissembourg is painted suggests that the glass painters of the twelfth century must have been perfectly aware of this phenomenon, for if viewed against a comparably variegated background, its unpainted areas and its halftones would produce a similar effect.8
The beauty of the Wissembourg Head of Christ stained glass window is emphasized and conveyed through the detailed technique of glass painting. This piece of art is a valuable contribution to the artwork of the 12th century.
NOTES
1. stainedglass.com 1995.
2. Sowers, Robert 1965, p. 47.
3. Ibid., p. 34.
4. Ibid., p. 50.
5. Iblid.
6.Stained Glass Association of America 1996, paragraph 11.
7. Sowers, Robert 1965, p.47.
8. Ibid., p.49.