Recent Discoveries and Acquisitions of Stained Glass Before 1700 in American Collections

COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA, MUSEUM OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY

Kristin Clark Gadsden, School of Visual Studies, University of Missouri, MA class of 2023

ORNAMENTAL QUATREFOIL BOSS

Condition: All medieval glass. Weathering and pitting on panel’s verso follow lead lines. Possible stopgap repairs from the same series. Asterisk-shaped marks together with a single ‘B’- shaped mark painted on the back of the lobes. Individual pieces of glass loose in leads, which are modern with heavy soldering.

Collections History: Barbara Giesicke, Badenweiler, Germany; Ward and Company, Works of Art, New York, NY

Bibliography: Nichole Papagni, “Reflecting on a Medieval Quatrefoil,” Museum Magazine, no. 48 (Winter 2006): 10 

Inventory number: 2005.11, Gilbreath-McLorn Museum Fund

http://maacollections.missouri.edu/ArgusNET/Portal/Portal.aspx?component=AAER&record=7da7f2d2-84ce-4f7d-b1df-216cb0448dffhttp://maacollections.missouri.edu/ArgusNET/Portal/Portal.aspx?component=AAER&record=7da7f2d2-84ce-4f7d-b1df-216cb0448dff

Entry Date: 2023

NEW YORK

CORNING

CORNING MUSEUM OF GLASS

Mary B. Shepard, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas-Fort Smith

THREE BORDER SECTIONS WITH FLEURS-DE-LIS

Condition: The three border sections are in excellent condition, with few to no stopgap repairs. Some cracks are present; most have been repaired with lead cames. Interestingly, the fleurs-de-lis are made from colorless glass (with a greenish tint), negating any royal associations (as per personal conversation with Meredith Lillich). Weathering is consistent and follows the lead lines. Leading is modern.

Collections History: Adolphe-Napoléon Didron (1806-1867) and/or Édouard-Amédée Didron (1836-1902), Paris; Bashford Dean (1867-1928), Riverdale, N.Y.

Bibliography:  Arms and Armor: Gothic and Renaissance Furniture, Sculpture, Decorations, Stained Glass, Books on Arms and Armor from the Collection Formed by the Late Bashford Dean, sale catalogue, New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc. (October 26, 1950): 33, lot 161

The border panels were inadvertently not included in the Corning section of CV US Checklist I, pp. 74-76 and in CV US II/1, pp. 63-108.

Inventory number: 50.2.117 A, B, C

https://glasscollection.cmog.org/objects/79/stained-glass

Entry Date: 2024

PENNSYLVANIA

BRYN ATHYN

THE LORD’S NEW CHURCH

Michael W. Cothren, Scheuer Family Professor Emeritus of Humanities, Swarthmore College

TWO FRAGMENTARY ORNAMENTAL ENSEMBLES FROM A WINDOW BORDER

France, Reims, Abbey Church of Saint-Remi

c. 1180-1200

Stained pot-metal glass with vitreous paint, with its original medieval leading

Approximately 5 ¼ x 7 7/8 in. (13.5 x 20 cm)

Condition: There are no modern replacements; all the glass and paint are original and medieval. Both the front and reverse surfaces are covered with corrosion—pervasive but smooth white spots on the exterior and crusts of a film of yellowish patina on the interior surface that has led to loss of paint. The lead framework seems to be medieval and original since it is consistent with the medieval leading of other surviving panels from Saint-Remi. The panels were professionally conserved, including being consolidated and cleaned, in 2023.

Collections History: Our knowledge of the modern history of these panels begins with the collection of Theodore Pitcairn (1893-1973), brother and neighbor of Raymond Pitcairn (1885-1966), both of whom were avid art collectors in the 1920s and 1930s. We do not know when, nor from whom, Theodore bought these two panels of ornament, but the wooden framework to which they are still attached is similar to those used by Parisian dealer Lucien Demotte (1906-1934) in his New York gallery, the source of many of the most important panels of stained glass acquired by Raymond, including panels from Saint-Remi.

Bibliography: Unpublished.

Related Bibliography: Charles Cahier and Arthur Martin, Monographie de la cathédrale de Bourges (Paris, 1841-44): vol. 2, pl. M-13; Alain Matthey de l’Étang, “La bordure, élément décoratif du vitrail roman (XIIe siècle),” Thèse de troisième cycle, Université de Paris I (1989): 550; Madeline Harrison Caviness, Sumptuous Arts at the Royal Abbeys in Reims and Braine (Princeton, 1990): esp. 21-35, 358.

Related Material: France, Amiens, Musée de Picardie, five border sections of the same design (one illustrated in Caviness 1990: 379, R.B.34). Several appear in a fabricated ensemble (composed of a collection of border sections and a standing figure of Saint-Remi originally from the cathedral of Beauvais) when they were in the collection of Albert Maignan (d. 1908). See E. Pottier, “La Collection de M. Albert Maignan. T. II,” Les Arts, revue mensuelle des musées, collections, expositions 59 (November 1906): 3.

Inventory numbers: F214 and F215.

Entry date: 2024

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PENNSYLVANIA

PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

Renée K. Burnam, Corpus Vitrearum USA and Italy

ADORATION OF THE MAGI

Condition: These three panels of glass originated in a window glazed for the de l’Isle-Adam family chapel, which was part of the chapel’s cycle of ten windows comprising twenty lancets and narrating events of Christ’s life and Passion. Each double-light window of the series consisted of round-headed lancets surmounted by a rose. The PMA glass preserves approximately three-fifths of one lancet. Most of the glass is original, and the vitreous paint is generally very well preserved.

Panel 1 is cropped at the bottom, resulting in the loss of the lower parts of the kneeling magus and seated Virgin. The head of the kneeling magus is a nineteenth-century replacement, possibly copied from the window’s damaged original or made after a magus (with remarkably similar facial features) in an oil painting of the same subject that Bellemare executed c. 1521 for the same de l’Isle-Adam chapel (Kunstmuseum, Basel, inv. no. 1721). In panel 2, there is limited repair, some probably with glass from the same window or series. In panel 3, original pieces may have been reorganized with glass from the same series and later replacements, perhaps partly to remedy missing pieces between panels 2 and 3 (?). The glass of the lancet’s uppermost section is lost. The museum’s panels exhibit small amounts of rust and corrosion residues. Evidence of undocumented restoration includes reflective splash and run marks, suggestive of cleaning with a chelating agent or acid, and cold paint application, employed to remedy small areas of paint loss perhaps caused by some over-zealous cleaning. During recent conservation (Holy Well Glass, Ltd., by 2016), the insertion of horizontal support bars remedied slight bowing and edge-bonding improved legibility with the removal of a vast network of mending leads. Extensive breakage—a total of 265 old breaks in the museum’s three panels—also typifies other surviving glass from the cycle. It could be hypothesized that the damage resulted from relocation or storage of several lancets of glass from the de l’Isle-Adam chapel within the Temple Church, since a 1783 model of the Temple complex in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, shows that the number of lancets in the family chapel was reduced to from twenty to eleven in the mid-seventeenth century when an adjacent chapel was modified. Alternatively, the breakage may have resulted from removing the glass from the site in advance of the Temple Church’s demolition in 1796.

Collections History: From July 1793-1816?, Musée des Monuments français, Paris; private collection, France (said to have been in the possession of the same family for a considerable period); Val di Boyer, rue de Beaune, Paris, until 2010; private collection, Switzerland, until 2011; Sam Fogg, Ltd., London

Bibliography: Jack Hinton, “The Adoration of the Magi,” in Philadelphia Museum of Art: Highlights, revised edition, eds. Sarah Noreika and Karie Brennan (Philadelphia, 2023): 114; Sam Fogg Presents Wonders of the Medieval World, sale cat., Sam Fogg and Richard L. Feigen & Co., 22 January–17 March 2014, (New York, 2014): 2, ill.; Roger Rosewell, “Jean Chastellain Window for Sale in New York,” Vidimus 76 (2014), ill. https://www.vidimus.org/blogs/news/jean-chastellain-window-for-sale-in-new-york/; Françoise Perrot, “Adoration des Mages,” n.d., unpublished, in the curatorial files of the department of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Guy-Michel Leproux, “Une oeuvre important de Noël Bellemare retrouvée au Kunstmuseum de Bâle: le retable de Philippe de Villers de L’Isle-Adam, grand maître de l’ordre de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 77/ 4 (2014): 481-490; E. J. J. Barillet, Recherches historiques sur la Temple (Paris, 1809): 54; Alexandre Lenoir, Notice historique des monumens des arts, rêunis au dépôt national, rue des Petits Augustins; suivis d’un Traité historique de la peinture sur verre (Paris, 1795-96): 98-99; Pierre Le Vieil, Traité de la peinture sur verre (Paris, 1724): 55; Henri Sauval, Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris, 1 (Paris, 1724): 454.

Related Material: Dispersed glass from the same cycle, removed from the site in 1793: Baptism of Christ, Raising of Lazarus, Entry into Jerusalem, Christ Mocked, east window, Southwell Minster (Nottinghamshire), CVMA GB, inv. nos. 022681, 022684, 022686, 022689 (https://www.cvma.ac.uk/jsp/location.do?locationKey=533&mode=LOCATION); Betrayal of Christ, Ecce Homo, and fragments (?), rose window, s2, Bristol, Lord Mayor’s Chapel (https://www.therosewindow.com/pilot/Bristol-LM/s2.htm); Pietà, Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 999  (https://kmska.be/en/masterpiece/pieta-0). Oil painting commissioned by L’Isle-Adam for his family’s chapel in the Paris Temple Church, by Noël Bellemare, Adoration of the Magi with the donor Philippe de Villiers de l’Isle Adam, c. 1521, Basel, Kunstmuseum,  inv. no. 1721, (https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/248659)

Inventory number: 2017-93-1, Purchased with the Fiske Kimball Fund, Walter E. Stait Fund and Dean Walker Fund, 2017

https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/339554

Entry Date: 2023