Posted on by susurrus

Two Stained Glass Panels From Gloucester and Glasgow Cathedrals

Stained glass window, St Mary and Child, Gloucester Cathedral
Madonna and Child with lilies

This lovely work of stained glass is part of the centrepiece of a triptych in the cloisters at Gloucester Cathedral showing St Agnes, St Mary and St Dorothy, by Morris & Co, 1924.

St Agnes, carrying a lamb, and St Dorothy, with a bouquet of roses and apples, incline their heads towards the Madonna and Child. Lilies, roses and apples fill the panels and stylised foliage patterns cover the floor. I found the lifelike faces compelling. How strange it must have felt to be the model for this work.

Stained glass panel celebrating gardeners in Glasgow Cathedral
Gardening, of Arts, the first

My second picture , from Glasgow Cathedral, is one in a series of panels celebrating the fourteen trades, including masons, coopers, barbers, weavers, bonnet makers & dyers, hammermen and maltmen. Tools of the trade and banners are incorporated into each design. Gardeners are represented by a spade and a rake and the motto: Gardening, Of Arts, The First’.

Both Gloucester and Glasgow Cathedrals have wonderful collections of stained glass, if you find yourself nearby once we’re free to roam again.

I hope you’ll find a way to enjoy the Easter weekend while staying safe.

Postscript for photographers

HeyJude’s 2020 photo challenge is looking at lines during April – never my strong point. It doesn’t matter with flowers, but if you’re trying to capture a scene, she’s right that crooked lines are disconcerting. When I first started taking pictures, my lines were so crooked, I often used to take the picture at an angle as if to shout out ‘I’m not trying to get things straight!’, but that soon became wearisome.

Getting the lines reasonably straight is still a real challenge. Level horizontal lines often involves sacrificing one or more of the verticals, unless you have a specialist lens, which I do not.

While I tend to take pictures quickly, I’ve learned to slow down when lines get involved and experiment. In both these cases, I tried to find a straight-on viewpoint. Holding the camera higher than you naturally would sometimes helps, as does using the grid most cameras have. Still, if you look back the first picture, the top right does not mirror the top left.

31 Replies to “Two Stained Glass Panels From Gloucester and Glasgow Cathedrals”

  1. I love looking at stained glass windows in churches and especially those that depict flowers or gardens. Choosing them for the horizontal challenge is quite brave as I find it extremely difficult to get the perspective right. As you say, the horizontals are beautifully lined up, but the verticals get distorted. However, the subject matter is so lovely it is not a distraction. In fact now I am left wanting to see St Agnes and St Dorothy.

  2. Those stained glass windows are beautiful. I’ve never heard of St. Dorothy. Nice comment about the faces. Also, really like the sentiment about gardening. I, too, have a problem with straight lines, and find the straightening device on my editing program very helpful. 😉

    1. St. Dorothy was martyred during the reign of Diocletian. On her way to be executed, Theophilus mocked her by asking her to send him fruits from the garden she said she was going to. She knelt and prayed right before her execution, and an angel delivered a basket of roses and apples to Theophilus. He became a Christain and was martyred as well.

        1. I would agree. I’m not Catholic, but we lived in Spain for four years and I found it interesting how there was a saint for everything, so I started looking up saints as they came up. The stories of the various saints are quite entertaining.

  3. How wonderful these are! You couldn’t have picked a better art form to mark this time. The play of light through stained glass seems so alive; it almost has a pulse. I love the lily’d madonna, but I am totally smitten by the window about gardening — that is extraordinary, and certainly places gardening where it belongs! After I read your postscript, I looked for the lines and I realized I hadn’t even noticed the lines in the stained glass, let alone the corners! That’s part of their magic. Thanks for this uplift!

    1. The blue is very powerful in the first picture and then there’s that emerald too. I like the idea of gardening as the first art.

  4. hi susan, very interesting stained glass windows the first is even bigger like the second, i like it very much.
    greetings robert

  6. I really like how the Gardners are also represented by Adam and Eve in the Gardeners stained glass. St. Frances is the patron saint of gardening in the Catholic tradition (he’s the patron saint of our village), but Adam and Eve were the first gardeners.

    1. My sweetheart has a St Fiacre – I think he is connected with gardening too. St Francis is one of the few saints I do know about. I’m interested in late 19th C and early 20th C writers and have the Little Plays of St Francis by Laurence Housman.

      1. I think St. Francis was a weirdo, but I’m probably in the minority on that thinking.

        1. Laurence Housman certainly rated him. I like the one about the boy who wanted to save his donkey and sent a letter with a simple posy of flowers and all the people in the chain meant to throw it away but the flowers exerted a kind of magic on them so they couldn’t.

  8. I’m a retired professor of medieval literature and a gardener. Thanks to everyone for the conversation above! Check the 13th-century Golden Legend (Legenda aurea) by Jacobs de Varagine for saints’ lives from medieval Europe.

  10. A stained glass window for gardeners – very cool! I remember when we visited Chartres there were windows sponsored by the different craft guilds that showed tradesmen at work – but no gardeners.

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