Stained glass is a type of art in which colored glass is cut and shaped in a mosaic way to create or represent a picture. Its main peak was between the 10th and 16th Centuries. It has been built almost exclusively as churches' windows.
There are a great deal of stained glass around the whole world. We show you a few of them in this brief presentation.
More about stained glass at www.vitrallsbonet.com/en
2. 1
‘Sainte Chapelle’, in Paris, is a miracle
of light and colour!
Epitome of radiant gothic, these windows
have remained perfect since 1248.
They have even endured fire and flood
and survived the French Revolution, the
Franco-Prussian war and two world wars.
3. ‘Notre Dame’ Cathedral in Paris 2
These stained glass windows illuminated the birth of medieval polyphony through the
'school of Notre Dame', which showed new paths to music just in the way of its
architecture illuminated the new planimetric and spatial concept of the Gothic.
The light is now taken into account as an aesthetic factor of the first order with an
architectural value unknown until then.
4. 3
Gothic is
essentially a new
architectural
language that
would stretch along
the thirteenth,
fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries
throughout Europe.
The great Gothic's
contribution has
not been the
pointer arch neither
buttresses nor
even another type
of structural
solutions but the
incorporation and
processing of light.
6. 1
‘Pulchra Leonina’ Hispanic Gothic 5
‘To this cathedral which
is more crystal than
stones, more light than
crystal and more spirit
than light’…
Karol Wojtyla.
The Leon Cathedral's
construction began in 1254
but much of the original
stained glass were lost
during the Napoleonic
invasion.
7. The Gothic was the epitome of urban renaissance
6
The Gothic
architect
organizes a
structure that
allows them to
use light as an
aesthetic factor
with
architectural
values.
The Gothic
stained glass
dematerialises
all architectural
elements to get
a feeling of
unprecedented
weightlessness
Reims Cathedral
8. 7
A physical and
diffused light, a
transfigured and
coloured light
through colour
contrast of the
opaline glass that
changes the space
into something
unreal, mystical and
symbolic.
Amiens
Cathedral
10. The Duomo in Siena, Italy
9
The gothic and its
stained glass did not
have an excessive
predicament of an Italy
attached to the Roman
tradition.
As an example of the
most pure Italian
Gothic we can mention
the cathedrals in
Orvieto, Sienna and
Milano.
11. San Vito Cathedral in Prague
10
Work of the modernist artist, Alphonse Mucha.
13. 12
Palma de Mallorca Cathedral
Exponent of Mediterranean Gothic, it was built
with massive walls and powerful buttresses that
left little room for openings, closed with Gothic
windows that project coloured light over the
solid walls. Some windows of the cathedral of
Palma and the canopy were designed by
Antonio Gaudi.
14. 13Cologne Cathedral
During WW II lighting systems warned the
pilots of the allied bombers of its
presence: all of them had express orders
to avoid any damage to the cathedral.
15. 14
Just one bomb hit the cathedral in one of its towers. It suffered a
huge damage and lost most of its stained glass windows.
19. 18
University city of Madrid,
Faculty of philosophy
The tradition
of stained
glass started
while
modernist
stage and
survived
across
Europe in
later years
throughout
the 20s
where it had
its boom in
Art Deco.
21. 20
'Casa Lleó i Morera' in Barcelona
The stained glass windows are compositions with pictorial values
made from opaline colourful glass that are assembled by lead rods.
The glass mass acts over the light breaking into a thousand multi-
coloured flashes defining flat surfaces with unmatched richness of
colour.
23. 22'Sagrada Familia' in Barcelona
Following a few indications from Gaudí,
Jovan Vila-Grau is in charge of the stained
glasses of the 'Sagrada Familia‘.
24. 1
23
Antonio Gaudí could not see his work on the 'Sagrada Familia' concluded,
it is still being built up. Most of the stained glass windows were made by
Josep Mª Bonet.
25. The most beautiful
stained glass in the world
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