Art: MODERN GLASS FOR MEDIEVAL CHURCHES

HOW to replace ruined medieval stained-glass windows has over the centuries steadily troubled French civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Time and wars have taken a cruel toll. The great tapestries of light that were once the glories of soaring cathedrals have been rattled by artillery, wrecked in revolutions, smashed by hailstones—and sometimes simply removed to give better reading light for sermons. The answer of the 19th century was restoration, which fell far short of the original works. Faced with repairing more than 3,000 churches since World War II, France has recently been employing its best modern artists (see color). The result is the greatest stained-glass revival in centuries.

Credit for opening up the field to modern artists belongs to Jean Verrier,* who as inspector general of historic monuments made a bold effort to end rigidly traditional restoration. But the man who most energetically carried on the crusade was a Dominican monk, Father Marie-Alain Couturier (TIME, June 20, 1949 et seq.). Before his death in 1954, he sought out artists in their studios, urged them to try their talents at sacred art in modestly abstract and semi-abstract styles. The first significant experiment was the installation of windows by famed Georges Rouault in the small modern Alpine church at Assy. It proved so successful that the way was paved for others, including windows of Jean Bazaine and Fernand Léger at Audincourt, and Matisse’s chapel at Vence. Today the stained-glass revival is sweeping into scores of medieval churches, most notably the famed cathedrals at Beauvais and Metz.

To create his windows for Metz Cathedral, installed earlier this year, Octogenarian Jacques Villon had all the elements available to the glassmasters of 13th century Chartres, and more. The soft radiance of medieval glass, coming from imperfections that fractured the light, was duplicated by hand craftsmanship. The gothic spectrum was expanded by modern chemistry to include an endless range of intermediate tones. But the laborious process of cutting glass to the pattern of the cartoon, painting in details with an enamel of metallic oxides and ground glass, baking it, and finally assembling it with strips of lead is almost unchanged. Villon worked several months on sketches (one-tenth actual size), made monthly trips to Reims to supervise the work. Said he: “I would love to do others. But at my age that is not likely. I’m sorry they did not ask me to do this ten or 20 years ago.”

Artist Rouault, who as a boy worked for six years in a glass factory, later carried over the glowing colors of stained glass into his painting, was entranced with the medium. When famed stained glass expert Paul Bony spotted two of Rouault’s favorite paintings of vases of flowers hanging in the artist’s studio, asked permission to reproduce them, Rouault found the results “better than my painting.” Georges Braque, for whom Bony executed ,the windows for Braque’s own chapel at his country home in Varengeville, Normandy, dwelled lovingly on the irregularities in the glass, dipped sponges into grisaille (a black iron oxide) to give the glass an added patina of his own. Whether modern art is suitable in ancient churches is an argument Braque considers academic. Says he: “This respect for the past happens to be a very recent thing. All good things, no matter what their period, can be neighbors without danger.”

*By a coincidence, the name is French for “glassmaker.”