Rouen Cathedral with stained glass by Max Ingrand 1956 (below)
The first leg of our road trip consisted of a journey from the north - Calais - to the south - Mazamet - with stops along the way, some for stained glass and some for camping. Our first stop was Rouen and a quick evening visit to Notre Dame Cathedral, famous for its façade painted by Monet, drawn by Ruskin and admired by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones on their sight seeing visit in 1855. On our trip the heat wave was on and the sun was blazing through tall thin windows filled with excellent examples of stained glass from the 13th to the 16th century. The 1950s windows, most notably by Max Ingrand, replaced the ones that were bombed during the Second World War. They are similar to the cathedral’s medieval and renaissance windows in terms of composition, with colours and imagery that fit in, in an unremarkable way. I loved the patterned windows (top right) in a design of squares and diamonds with painted details that makes the glass look padded, like a quilt.
Stained glass windows in the church of St Ouen, Léry.
Early the next morning we stopped outside a church 15 miles away, and found it open, the interior beautifully kept. It looked, sounded (taped organ music) and smelt in perfect order, with painted walls, tiled floors, wooden sculptures and a complete set of twentieth century windows. The ones in the lower windows (shown above) were all of a similar design in different colour combinations and they became more satisfying the longer we looked at them. Like the patterned windows in Rouen Cathedral, I couldn’t find a name or a date, and like those windows they were in harmony with the architecture. When I was an art student I used to call this sort of stained glass ‘subservient to the architecture’, now I tend to think that’s a positive quality for a stained glass window to have.
Chartres Cathedral: east window, west window and Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière. 12th and 13th century glass.
We spent a day in Chartres, where I hadn’t been since I was a school student. I knew the interior had been controversially cleaned, so the pools of coloured light projected through the glass don’t seem so intense now that the interior is mostly white, rather than mostly black. However the medieval stained glass in its entirety is the best there is; huge and intricate, overwhelming and predominantly cobalt blue. The windows above the west door are beautiful (above centre) and so is the window of Notre Dame de la Belle Verrière (above right) that was always one of my favourites in my stained glass picture books. That’s one of the points of the road trip - to stand in front of your favourite artworks, an experience that is completely different from looking at them in a book or on a screen.