Glas in lood Gilded light full catalogue

Gilded Light
16th–century stained glass roundels from the
collection of Sir Thomas Neave and other private collections

Gilded Light
16th–century stained glass roundels from the
collection of Sir Thomas Neave and other private collections
M. Reeves, C.J. Berserik, and J.M.A. Caen
SAM FOGG
Published to accompany the exhibition
Gilded Light; 16th-century stained glass roundels
from the collection of Sir Thomas Neave and other
private collections
A London Art Week Exhibition
1 - 8 July 2016
Sam Fogg
15D Clifford Street
London W1S 4JZ
Texts copyright © 2016 the authors

1
Silver-stained roundels and stained glass panels from the collection of
Sir Thomas Neave, Dagnam Park, Noak Hill (Essex)
In a short space of time between the aggres-
sive religious reforms of the late 18th century,
and the Battle of Waterloo early in the 19th, Eng-
lish connoisseurs amassed exquisite collections of
stained glass that have shaped our understanding of
the medium ever since. One of them, Sir Thomas
Neave (1761-1848), second Baronet of Dagnam
Park, Essex, acquired choice fragments, panels,
and larger windows from the finest glazing pro-
grams of the Medieval and Renaissance eras, and
glass once owned by him now hangs in the col-
lections of many of the world’s greatest museums.
In 2015 two leaded windows from Dag-
nam Park, comprising some fourteen individu-
al panels of stained glass dating from the 15th to
17th centuries, came to light when they were of-
fered for sale by Neave’s descendants. Follow-
ing the removal of each piece of glass from their
badly degraded iron casements, and their careful
cleaning, conservation, and study, it very quickly
became clear that a number of the roundels and
rectangular panels in the group were of an excep-
tional quality, and even more importantly, could
be attributed to some of the foremost 16th-century
glass-painters active in the Low Countries, includ-
ing Jan Swart van Groningen, Dirck and Wouter
Crabeth, and Lambert van Noort. Alongside their
quality and generally excellent condition, their
provenance was also of major importance, since
Neave, who acquired them very early in the nine-
teenth century, was among the first to fuel demand
for Netherlandish stained glass, thus helping to save
it from destruction, a very real and serious threat in
the wake of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II’s dis-
sollution of monasteries across the Low Countries.
These fourteen stained glass panels are presented
as the highlights of the London Art Week exhibi-
tion ‘Gilded Light: 16th-century stained glass roun-
dels from the collection of Sir Thomas Neave and
other private collections’, which runs from 1–8 July
2016. It will be the first time in nearly 250 years
that these roundels, alongside more than 20 oth-
ers gathered together by Sam Fogg over the course
of the last decade, have been on public display.

ledger (the portrait of Knipperdolling was valued at
10 pounds and 10 shillings, for instance) and diverg-
es markedly from his valuation of larger windows,
which he typically costs out at dozens or even hun-
dred of pounds. It is highly possible, therefore, that
this newly resurfaced panel can be identified as the
same ‘Repast’ as that sold to Neave by Hampp in
February 1803. If so, then it would make it the only
explicitly documented piece of glass in their transac-
tions to survive, and a wonderful piece of evidence in
the reconstruction of Neave’s early collecting habits.
Sir Thomas Neave; collections and misconcep-
tions, dispersals and rediscoveries
Alongside his collection of high-quality Neth-
erlandish roundels and other small panels, Neave
is especially well known for the large amount of
stained-glass that he is believed to have acquired
from Carthusian foundations. In many of the stud-
ies that have been undertaken on his collections,
scholars have typically assumed that these larger
windows all originated from the Charterhouse of St
Mary Magdalene in Louvain. Currently, some 350
such panels are listed (attesting to something of an
insatiable appetite for the medium!), all with rough-
ly similar measurements (c. 70 x 50 cm). However,
a number of these panels can be attributed to dispa-
rate workshops, like those of Hendrik van Diepen-
daele, Jan Rombouts, Dirick Vellert, Pieter Coecke
van Aelst, a workshop in the circle of Bernard van
Orley, and even Jan de Caumont, and they range in
date from c. 1480 to c. 1680. Therefore, to define
all of these as originating from the Charterhouse at
Louvain cannot be correct, and it is instead clear that
Neave acquired glass in large quantities from a va-
riety of sources.
Anumber of Carthusian monasteries or Charter-
houses were formed throughout France and the Low
Countries: in Rouen, Antwerp, Scheut, Nieuwpoort,
Lier and Louvain for example. All of these monas-
teries had glazing programmes. Indeed, documen-
tation of the 15th/16th century windows at Scheut,
near Brussels, has recently been rediscovered in a
manuscript kept in the archives of the Ministry of
Sir Thomas Neave was born in 1761 and we read
from his Obituary in ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine,
1848’, that he died April 11, 1848, at Dagnam
Park, Essex, aged 86. During his lifetime Neave
was a deputy lieutenant of the county of Essex,
and a commissioner of the lieutenancy of London,
F.R.S. and F.S.A. The Neave Baronetcy of Dag-
nam Park (Essex) was created on May 13, 1795 for
his father, Richard Neave, a Governor of the Bank
of England, and he inherited the title by descent.
It was widely documented during his lifetime
that Neave had a passion for continental stained
glass, especially glass from the Low Countries. In
‘The Environs of London...’1
, published by the Rev.
Daniel Lyons in 1811, Neave is described as having
at his ‘villa’, ‘a very large and most valuable collec-
tion of ancient painted glass, a great part of which
was procured from various convents on the Conti-
nent...’. For Neave, who was one of the very first
connoisseur collectors of stained glass in England, it
was in fact relatively straightforward to obtain large
numbers of painted windows and smaller panels
from the continent. In the Southern Low Countries,
for example, some 700 convents and monasteries
were dissolved at the behest of Joseph II at the end
of the eighteenth century. He ordered the confisca-
tion and sale of church property (particularly that
of monastic foundations), and in 1783 installed an
organisation with the name ‘Comité de la Caisse de
Religion’ to oversee the task.2
The Comité’s docu-
mentation and ledger books survive to this day in the
State Archives in Brussels3
(fig.1), and their records
of the region’s stained glass – which was to be of-
fered on the open market and would end up in the
hands of collectors including Neave – offer tantalis-
ing and informative glimpses of how the medium
was viewed, understood, and valued at the time.
The glass then in situ at the Charterhouse in Lou-
vain, for example, was considered of great quality,
made by the best artists, and in excellent condition;
attributes that were sure to appeal to the burgeon-
ing connoisseur collectors of England and Europe.
It is possible that Neave travelled to Europe per-
sonally to view and acquire important stained glass
from redundant church buildings, and family tradi-
tion has it that much of his collection was purchased
pageofhisledger,Hamppwrote;‘anitemwiththein-
scription “Knipperdolling”, Mr Neave 10 10’, which
must refer to a portrait of the Münster Anabaptist
leader Bernard Knipperdolling (c. 1495-1536), most
likely painted after an engraving like the one below.
The second reference explicitly mentioning
Neave as the purchaser is of more significance
for the present catalogue. In February of 1803,
Hampp records a ‘Repast, Mr Philips 97 Br. St ...
8 [pounds] ... Sent in a Box to Mr Neave’. While
Bernard Rackham, who published Hampp’s account
book in 1927, described this ‘Repast’ as ‘probably
a roundel with a classical banqueting scene in the
manner of Heemskerck, such as may be seen at
South Kensington’, his reconstruction was based
purely on conjecture (and his loyalty to the collec-
tions of the South Kensington Museum, now the
V&A), and no panel from the Neave collection de-
picting a repast of any kind has come to light un-
til now.6
However, for a merchant used to making
brief notes, and for anyone without a specialised
knowledge of Biblical imagery, the large Marriage
Feast at Cana by Jan Swart van Groningen (No. 3
in this catalogue), is exactly the type of image that
could be referred to in passing as a ‘Repast’. Indeed,
with its emphasis on merry-making and its meticu-
lous illustration of a throng of people pouring and
drinking wine, cooking and serving food, and eat-
ing around communal tables whilst being serenaded
from a balcony by musicians, it offers a compelling
candidate for Hampp’s panel. Moreover, Hampp’s
pricing of his ‘Repast’ at a sum of eight pounds is
equally informative, since it is entirely consistent
with other roundels and small panels recorded in his
Fig. 1: f. 15, Carton 59, Brussels, State Archives
in the market at Rouen during his Grand Tour with
his friend, Lord Dufferin.4
However, it is also known
that he obtained glass from other sources closer to
home. The German cloth merchant and art dealer
John Christopher Hampp, who was born in 1750 at
Marbach, Germany, and by 1782 had settled in Nor-
wich, imported stained glass for several collectors,
and his account book of 1803 (preserved in the Fit-
zwilliam Museum, Cambridge) records the sale of
at least two stained glass panels to Neave.5
Hampp’s
first continental voyage to buy glass, together with
the antiquarian Seth William Stevenson, was to
Rouen, and probably took place at the end of 1801
or during the first months of 1802, around the time
of the Treaty of Amiens. Unfortunately, most of the
1803 account book’s records are too brief to glean
much about what he may have bought there, but it
is clear that the quantity of stained-glass panels and
windows that Hampp handled at this time must have
been enormous; references are made to ‘6 boxes of
glass’ (March 4, 1803), and ‘5 cases of glass’ (Feb-
ruary 5, 1804), for example. Notwithstanding these
brief descriptions, the two roundels acquired by Sir
Thomas from Hampp and recorded in his 1803 ledger
evince a relationship that in all likelihood bore more
fruitsthanwearecurrentlyabletoreconstruct.Onone
2 3
Fig. 2: Portrait of Bernard
Knipperdolling

5
Fig. 5 (above left): Joannes van den Broeck and St John the
Evangelist, Llanwennllwyfo church, panel from the Lier Char-
terhouse (?), Jan de Caumont and workshop (photo: Mary
Tucker © Dean & Chapter of Canterbury)
Fig. 6 (above right): Margareta Vekemans, panel in 2002, M
Museum, Louvain (photo: ©Barbara Giesicke)
1
Daniel Lysons, The environs of London: being an historical
account of the towns, villages, and hamlets, within twelve miles
of that capital: interspersed with biographical anecdotes, vol.
II-part I, County of Middlesex. Acton-Hefton, London 1811
(second edition), p. 353.
2
See on this subject: C.J. Berserik and J.M.A. Caen, ‘Roundels
in the Low Countries: from flourishing trade to clearance
sale’, Silver-Stained Roundels and Unipartite Panels before
the French Revolution, Flanders, Vol. 1: The Province of Ant-
werp. Corpus Vitrearum Belgium, Checklist Series,Turnhout
2007, pp. XVII-XXV.
3
Brussels, State Archives, Comité de la Caisse de Religion,
Carton 59.
4
Hilary Wayment, King’s College Chapel Cambridge: The
Side-Chapel Glass, Cambridge 1988, p. 24.
5
Ibid. pp. 23 and 24. In this article Wayment describes the his-
tory of the collection after the death of Sir Thomas. See also
Jean Lafond, ‘The Traffic in Old Stained Glass from abroad
during the 18th and 19th centuries in England’, in Journal of
the British Society of Master Glass-Painters, vol. XIV, no. 1
(1964), pp. 58-67.
6
Bernard Rackham, ‘English importations of foreign stained
glass in the early nineteenth century’, in Journal of the British
Society of Master Glass-Painters, vol. II, no. 2 (October 1927),
pp. 86-94.
7
Several articles on this subject are published in: ‘De Kartuize
van Scheut en Rogier van der Weyden’, Milennium, tijdschrift
voor middeleeuwse studies, vol. 23 (2009).
8
(Vol. 5): Verzameling der Graf- en Gedenkschriften van de
Provincie Antwerpen – Arrondissement Antwerpen. vyfde deel.
Antwerpen – Kloosters, Antwerp, pp. 504-529 and (Vol. 7)
Arrondissement Mechelen. zevende deel. – Lier. – Parochie-
en Kloosterkerken, Antwerp 1902, pp. 269-294. A number of
fragments now in the The Beaney House in Canterbury could
be traced back to the Lier Charterhouse by these publications,
see C.J. Berserik and J.M.A. Caen op. cit. pp. 369-392.
9
Auction Jürg Stuker, May 8, 1956, lot 3389 i, fig. 14. It ap-
peared again in a Swiss auction in 1958: Fischer Auktionen,
Luzern, June 17-21, 1958, lot no. 568 b. Until 2002 the panel
was in a Swiss private collection, some years ago it appeared
on the German art market and has now been acquired by the
Louvain Museum M.
10
Jan de Caumont (born c. 1576/1577 in Picardy, France)
moved to Louvain in 1607. He married Anna Boels, a niece
of the glass-painter Simon Boels. De Caumont worked for this
Simon Boels during his first years in Louvain. His most active
period were the years 1635 to 1645 during which the famous
Park Abbey windows were completed. He died in 1659 at the
age of 73. His workshop seems to have been active until the
end of the century.
Interior Affairs in Brussels, and some of the surviv-
ing drawings are extremely close in composition to
several of the Neave panels currently believed to
originate from Louvain (Figs.3-4).7
Fig. 3 (above left): Diagram of the glazing program at Scheut
Charterhouse (photo: Millennium)
Fig. 4 (above right): London, V&A, inv. no. C 212-1908
(photo:© V&A, London)
Two such Carthusian glass programs are rather
precisely described in the volumes of the art histori-
cal journal ‘Graf en Gedenkschriften’ covering the
Province of Antwerp, and their histories have re-
cently been highlighted by the acquisition of a large
single panel from one of these groups by the M Mu-
seum in Louvain (Figs.5-6).8
Thanks to the surviv-
ing descriptions of these vast glazing programs, a
panel also from the Neave collection depicting Jo-
hannes van den Broeck and his namesaint, Saint
John the Evangelist (now in Llanwenllwyfo church,
Isle ofAnglesey), can be tentatively connected to the
Lier Charterhouse, while the panel acquired by the
M Museum is undoubtedly from the same program
and may also have come from the Neave collection.9
It depicts Margareta Vekemans, her daughter(?)
and Saints Agnes and Elizabeth, and was painted
by the Louvain glass-painter Jan de Caumont.10
After Sir Thomas Neave’s death, parts of his
collection were sold off and the remaining glass
4
divided among his descendants. A number of ‘Car-
thusian’ panels from the Neave collection were
acquired in large quantities by Roy Grosvenor
Thomas, the most active dealer in stained glass in
the early 20th century, with premises in London
and New York, and who sold to museums includ-
ing the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Victo-
ria and Albert Museum, The Burrell Collection,
The Cleveland Museum of Art and many others.
An important part of Neave’s legacy is his endow-
ment (and that of his descendents) of a number
of English parish churches with stained glass that
either could not be displayed at Dagnam Park, or
that he had wanted to keep in the public domain.
Indeed, windows formed from his collection sur-
vive in Noak Hill, South Weald, Llanwenllwyfo,
Prittlewell, Shrewsbury, and other places, some of
which even consist of his so-called ‘Carthusian’pan-
els. Neave’s collecting and preservation of stained
glass from the Low Countries has arguably enriched
our understanding of the history and development of
the medium more than the efforts of any other early-
modern connoisseur-collector of his generation, and
the remarkable survivals presented in this new exhi-
bition – the first of its kind in London for several dec-
adesevincehisacuteeyeandpassionforthemedium.

1. (17554005)
Master of the Story of Tobit
The Marriage of Tobias and Sarah
Low Countries, County of Flanders
c. 1480-1500
Ø 22.4 cm
The story of Tobias and Sarah was first written
into the biblical canon at the Council of Carthage
in 397. According to the legend, which is set in the
8th century B.C., Tobias was sent by his recently
blinded father Tobit to collect a debt from a kins-
man. On his journey he was accompanied by the
archangel Raphael who had disguised himself in
human form. The angel tells Tobias to catch a fish,
of which the gall and liver could be used to cure
both his blind father, and a young woman called
Sarah who was possessed by a demon. After cur-
ing Sarah, Tobias marries her, and takes her home
to his father, who is also cured of his blindness.
Each of the scenes visible on this roundel rep-
resent specific moments in the story. In the fore-
ground, Tobias and Sarah exchange wedding vows
before two witnesses, of whom one is the archan-
gel. The three smaller scenes in the background
show the slaughtering of the golden calf (symbolic
of the Israelite religion that Tobit rejected in favour
of the True God), Sarah in prayer beside her mar-
riage bed, and Tobias burning the innards of the fish.
This is one of the earliest of a group of roun-
dels all with similar compositions, of which exam-
ples are preserved in museums in Cologne, London
and Leipzig, and in Durham Cathedral. They are
based on a now lost design attributed to a draughts-
man known as the Master of the Story of Tobit,
who seems to have had close contact to the work
of the famous Ghent painter Hugo van der Goes
(1430 Ghent-1482 1482 Brussels), since the sur-
viving drawings (now in the Dresden and Berlin
Museum printrooms, as well as at Windsor Cas-
tle) are dominated by Goesian stylistic influences.
The corpus of roundels produced by the Mas-
ter of the Story of Tobit and his colleagues are
dateable from the last quarter of the 15th century
up to the second quarter of the 16th, and provide
us with the earliest evidence of successful and
large-scale roundel production in the Lowlands.
Related Literature
T. Husband (et al.), The Luminous Image Painted
Glassroundels in the Lowlands, 1480-1560, Exh.
Cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
May 23-August 20, 1995, cat. nos 12-14, pp. 64-67.
C.J. Berserik and J.M.A. Caen, Silver-Stained
Roundels and Unipartite Panels before the French
Revolution, Flanders, Vol. 2: The Provinces of East
and West Flanders. Corpus Vitrearum Belgium,
Checklist Series, Brussels 2011, pp. 177-187.
6 7
Provenance
Dagnam Park, collection of Sir Thomas Neave,
the second baronet (1761-1848) and his direct
descendants

8
2. (17553001)
Dirck Pietersz. Crabeth (c. 1520-1574)
The Birth of Moses
Northern Low Countries, Gouda
c. 1550
36.5 x 20.7 cm
At the far left of the scene a woman lies in
a large tester bed recovering from the birth of her
son, who is being washed in a shallow bath by two
midwives on the right. A ewer, drinking glass, and
soup bowl are arranged on a low cloth-covered table
in the foreground, while visible through an arched
doorway at the rear of the room are a group of fig-
ures who gather to send the infant away onto the
waters of a broad river, lying in a simple square cot.
It is this small scene that identifies the panel’s im-
agery as the birth and early childhood of Moses; ac-
cording to the second chapter of the Book of Exodus
the story begins “Now a man of the tribe of Levi
married a Levite woman, and she became preg-
nant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he
was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But
when she could hide him no longer, she got a papy-
rus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch.
Then she placed the child in it and put it among the
reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood
at a distance to see what would happen to him”.
Dirck Pietersz. Crabeth was the most accom-
plished of the Crabeth family of glass painters, and
is best known for a now lost series of monumental
windows executed for the church of Saint John in
Gouda, the city in which he was born around 1520
and is documented to have been resident from 1545
until his death in 1574. His skill drew the patron-
age of Philip II, Margaret of Parma, George van Eg-
mond (bishop of Utrecht) and William of Orange,
among others. Alongside larger commissions, it has
been convincingly argued that he painted a group
of secular windows for a house called the Pax Huic
Domui on the Pieterskerkgracht in Leiden, the sur-
viving panels from which bear the date 1543. Like
a number of the Pieterskerkgracht windows, our
panel is made from two panes apposed to form an
arch-topped composition of vertical format, and is
likely to have been set similarly into a larger glass
matrix painted with architectonic ornament, since
its own architectural motifs are so considered and
forcefully composed. The decoration of the circu-
lar window surrounds and the furniture in the scene
is also stylistically linked to two of the wooden
window frames surviving from the Leiden house,
carved with caryatid figures, masks, and acanthus
leaves, suggesting a repertoir of motifs and pat-
terns that extended across glass, furniture, and
building design at this date in equal proportions.
Thiswindowisthefirstofseveralwindowsdoc-
umenting the story of Moses produced in Crabeth’s
Gouda workshop towards the middle of the sixteenth
century. A number of drawings and panels from the
series have survived, and can be found in the col-
lections of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the Mu-
seum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp, Dundalk church,
Ireland; Cholmondely Castle Chapel and other sites.
Another, probably later version of the same scene,
also by the Crabeth workshop (Wouter Crabeth?),
can be seen in the church of St. Mary in Shrewsbury.
9
Provenance
descendants

10 11
3. (17553002)
Jan Swart van Groningen (c. 1490/1500-1560/70)
The Marriage Feast at Cana
Southern Low Countries, Antwerp
c. 1550
This bipartite panel, constructed in the same
manner as Cat. No. 2, shows the Marriage Feast
at Cana as described in the gospel of St John (2:1-
11). Mary, Christ, and the Disciples are said to have
attended the feast of a newly wedded couple, and
such was the revelry that the party ran out of wine.
When Christ ordered six stone jars to be filled with
water, he miraculously turned the liquid into wine,
which is the very moment we are witnessing here.
However, aside from documenting a standard reli-
gious narrative, our artist was clearly also fascinated
by colour, sound, and perspective; silver stain fills
the composition, two musicians with puffed cheeks
seranade the gathering from above, and a deep sense
of spatial recession animates and resolves the over-
lapping forms of the scene’s dense throng of people.
In February 1803 the German-born glass dealer
Christopher Hampp recorded a sale to Sir Thomas
Neave of a “Repast”, one of only two documented
transactions known between the merchant and his
client. With its marvellous emphasis on revelry and
feasting, it is highly likely that the present panel
can be identified as the very “Repast” recorded in
Hampp’s account book, and if so, then it is the only
documented piece of stained glass to have survived
from their fruitful relationship, and sheds consider-
able light both on the sources of Sir Thomas’s col-
lection, and on the type of glass that Hampp was
able to secure for his English collectors at this date.
This exquisitely painted panel, notable for the
quality of its drawing, the deep chiaroscuro effect of
its shading, and the controlled and masterful use of
silver stain, can be securely attributed to the work-
shop of Jan Swart van Groningen (1490/1500 Gro-
ningen-1560/1570 Antwerp?), and is one the very
finest and most intact panels to have survived from
his milieu. His work, which reveals a clear debt to
the influence of Dirick Vellert and Pieter Coecke van
Aeslt, was valued highly by the Crabeth brothers in
Gouda, and he trained Adriaen Pietersz. Crabeth in
his own highly successful workshop. The treatment
of our panel’s composition and many of its motifs,
such as the servant carrying a plate of food above
his head, the deployment of figures with their backs
turned to the viewer or with long swagged draper-
ies, the strong horizontal emphasis of the architec-
tural detailing, and the soft, raking shadow thrown
on the gold cloth of honour behind the newlyweds,
are closely related to drawings by Swart now in the
Rijksmuseum, the British Museum, and the Staatli-
che Museen in Berlin. Another drawing in the Col-
lection Frits Lugt in Paris, which has been dated to
c. 1545-50, perhaps offers the closest single parallel,
and it is in this date range that our panel was most
likely produced.
Literature on the Jan Swart workshop
Tim Husband (et al.), The Luminous Image; Paint-
ed Glass roundels in the Lowlands, 1480-1560, Exh.
May 23-August 20, 1995, chapter 11, pp. 166-174.
Provenance
descendants

12
4. (17553004)
Circle of Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502-1550)
The Agony in the Garden
Southern Netherlands, Antwerp
c. 1530
Ø 27.9 cm
This roundel shows Christ and His Disciples
in the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the
Mount of Olives, near Jerusalem. According to all
four of the Canonical Gospels, on the night before
His arrest and Crucifixion, Christ is alleged to have
prayed in the garden to have Himself spared from
His ordained fate, and to have asked His three Disci-
ples to keep guard while He prayed. However, each
time He asked, they fell asleep, leading Him to cry
“The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”. Visible
in the distance are the soldiers arriving to arrest
Him, with Judas Iscariot leading them forwards.
This deftly painted roundel shows the pro-
nounced influence of the Antwerp Mannerists of
the early decades of the sixteenth century, and
was most likely produced after a design by Pieter
Coecke van Aelst (Aalst 1502- 1550 Brussels). The
overlapping planes of the receding landscape, the
elongated bodies of the figures, and the details and
ornamentation of their garments, find direct par-
allels in a group of roundels painted around 1530
after his designs and now distributed among a
number of museum collections. Another roundel
of the same scene is preserved in the collection of
the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels.
Provenance
descendants
13

14
5. (17553006)
Nebuchadnezzar Dreams of a Tree that Must be
Felled, after a design by Lambert van Noort (c.
1520-1571)
Low Countries, Duchy of Brabant, Antwerp
c. 1560
Ø 26.2 cm
An elderly King lies asleep in his bedclothes,
and behind him is a cloud-like vision with an angel
directing our focus to a tall tree, under which ex-
otic animals graze together. This strange vision is in
fact the dream of Nebuchadnezzar described in Dan-
iel 4:10-12, in which the angel appears to him and
shows him a tree visible to the ends of the world.
It has beautiful foliage with abundant fruits, and it
provides food for all, but it must, according to the
angel, be cut down. It is the prophet Daniel who
eventually explains the dream, equating the mighty
tree to the fallible and fleeting power of Nebuchad-
nezzar himself. For the King to cut down the tree
and live on the ground with the animals would be
to renounce his ungodly dominion over the world,
but by leaving only the tree’s roots, bound in the
earth, his power would be restored under God.
This roundel is based on the first etching from a
series of eight representing the story of Nebuchadn-
ezzar, the designs for which have been attributed to
theAntwerp-based artist Lambert van Noort (c. 1520
Amersfoort-1571 Antwerp). Each of the scenes was
popularised through etched copies of van Noort’s
designs created in 1558 by the printmaker Hans
Liefrinck (1518Augsburg- 1573Antwerp), and it is to
these etchings that our artist, who was clearly a high-
ly accomplished glass painter, seems to have turned
for this roundel (see fig. 1) and Cat. No. 6. Moreo-
ver, although they reproduce popular compositions,
both roundels are the work of a painter otherwise
undocumented by surviving versions of this series,
and they are therefore hugely significant for our un-
derstanding of the group of artists flourishing around
van Noort, and who represent the final flowerings
of high-quality glass production in the Lowlands.
Related literature
Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman, ‘Lambert van
Noort Inventor’, Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke
Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone
Kunsten van België, Klasse der Schone Kunsten vol.
57 (1995), nos P II and G X.
Tim Husband (et al.), The Luminous Image; Painted
Glass roundels in the Lowlands, 1480-1560, Exh.
May 23-August 20, 1995, cat. nos 115 and 116, pp.
195-197.
Fig. 1
Hans Liefrinck
Nebuchadnezzar Dreams of a Tree that Must be Felled,
etching after a design by Lambert van Noort
1558
15
Provenance
descendants

16
6. (17554007)
Nebuchadnezzar Eating Grass Among the Cows,
after a design by Lambert van Noort (c. 1520-
1571)
c. 1560
Ø 25.3 cm
In a scene following that of Nebuchadn-
ezzar’s Dream (Cat. No. 5), the King has dis-
pensed of his crown and is shown instead on
his hands and knees, eating grass among horses
and cattle. The grass (as well as the subtle ves-
tiges of the King’s former status represented by
the tasseled hemline of his garments) is deeply
saturated with yellow stain giving the impres-
sion of lavish gilding – an effect that delighted
glass painters and their patrons alike during
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries but is rare-
ly used to the same extent as on this roundel.
The scene’s composition is based on the
sixth etching from a series of eight that tell the
story of King Nebuchadnezzar, of which the
design was likely conceived by Lambert van
Noort, and in 1558 turned into an etching by
his fellow Antwerp-based artist Hans Liefrinck
(fig. 1). The Nebuchadnezzar narrative was im-
mensely popular as a moralising and cautionary
tale against the dangers of stupid and irrational
pride. In the final part of the story the King of
Babylon is restored to power, and his wise coun-
terpart Daniel serves as a personification of jus-
tice for those who repent against sin and pride.
Related literature
Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman, ‘Lambert van
Noort Inventor’, Verhandelingen van de Konin-
klijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en
Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Schone
Kunsten vol. 57 (1995), nos P II and G X.
Tim Husband ‘Stained Glass before 1700 in Ameri-
can Collections: Silver-Stained Roundels and Uni-
partite Panels’, CVMA USA Checklist 4, Studies
in the History of Art,Monograph Series 1, vol. 39,
Washington 1991, p.51
Tim Husband (et al.), The Luminous Image; Painted
Glass roundels in the Lowlands, 1480-1560, Exh. Cat.,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May
23-August 20, 1995, cat. nos. 115 and 116, pp. 195-197.
Fig. 1
Hans Liefrinck
Nebuchadnezzar Eating Grass, etching
after a design by Lambert van Noort
1558
17
Provenance
descendants

1918
7. (17554001)
Joseph Dreams of the Seven Golden Sheaves
Southern Low Countries or Northern France
c. 1535-1545
24.3 x 19.7 cm
This rare rectangular panel depicts the first
two dreams of Joseph, the youngest son of Ja-
cob and Rachel famous for his “coat of many col-
ours”. Before he was abducted and sold into slav-
ery by his jealous brothers, Joseph dreamt that he
and his siblings were working on the land binding
sheaves of corn. In his first dream, the sheaves of
his brothers bow to his own, while in his second
the moon and stars also bow before him (Genesis
37: 6-9) in prolepsis of his becoming King. Joseph,
dressed in a long coat coloured with vivid yellow
stain, lies sleeping against a tree at the front of the
scene, while his dreams take place not in a sepa-
rate vision but behind him in the landscape beyond.
The iconography and format of this panel sug-
gests that it originally formed one of the first in a se-
ries telling the story of Joseph, a popular narrative for
glass painters in the Low Countries and France dur-
ing the sixteenth century.Acircular roundel in Christ
Church, Herefordshire, reproduces what appears to
be the same (or a closely related composition), but no
othersofthedesigninarectangularformatareknown.
19
Provenance
descendants

20
8. (17554003)
Wouter Pietersz. Crabeth (1510-1590)
The Resurrection of Christ over Sin and Evil
Northern Low Countries, Gouda
c. 1560
23.2 x 19.7 cm
The Resurrection of Christ on this large rec-
tangular panel is not an example of Resurrection
imagery normally encountered in Catholic art. The
standard elements are here: Christ steps from the
tomb, seraphim appear in the heavenly aureole of
light around His person, and soldiers flee in fear, but
there is also more. Christ is shown as the triumphant
Salvator Mundi, holding a flag staff with the sign
of the Cross (the symbol of the Church Militant),
and with His right foot He steps on the Globus Cru-
ciger, the customary Christian symbol of authority.
Sprawling on the ground a skeleton (Adam) and the
horned, pock-marked figure of a devil emphasise
the Victory of Christ over Sin and Evil, a subject
made all the more emphatic by the inclusion of the
word ZONDE ‘Sin’ painted on the devil’s piled ac-
cutrements. The scene’s iconography is thus unmis-
takably Protestant in tone; man must act in the im-
age of Christ and can defeat sin and evil only by
strong faith and not by welldoing (Acts of Mercy).
As a result, it was most likely made for a Protestant
family or foundation in the northern Netherlands.
The drawing style of the present panel is high-
ly particular in the context of late-Medieval gri-
saille glass painting, in that it seems to have been
executed using a dip pen rather than a brush, al-
lowing for an acute level of control and a highly
consistent, even character of line. For further ef-
fect, pink sanguine (a pigment made using meticu-
lously distilled iron oxide) sensitively applied to
the edges of the aureole behind Christ deepens the
hue and tints the silver stain a warm, vivid orange.
The stained glass of Wouter Pietersz. Cra-
beth (c. 1520-1589 Gouda) whose figures, with
elongated, elegant bodies are of a type more
lively than those in the work of his brother
Dirck Pietersz. (c. 1510-1574 Gouda), is immediate-
ly and uniquely recognisable, although he remains
an under-explored personality in the field of late-
Medieval stained glass. In fact hardly any works
of art were attributed to him before Zsuzsanna van
Ruyven-Zeman reconstructed his oeuvre in an arti-
cle published in 1986, and based on her scholarship
a small corpus of other roundels have since been as-
cribed to his hand. Our panel’s treatment is close-
ly related to another in a private collection show-
ing the prophet Habakkuk and the angel, which in
turn reproduces figures found in four monumental
windows painted by Crabeth for St. Jan’s Church in
Gouda between 1560 and 1566, and it can be convinc-
ingly dated to c. 1560 based on the apparent surge of
interest in Protestant iconography around this date.
Indeed, several stained glass panels by Wouter’s
brother Dirck, dated to c. 1560 and depicting Man’s
Path to Salvation following a contemporary series
of engravings by Frans Huys, are widely known and
have been well studied. However, ours is the only
version representing such imagery to have survived
by Wouter’s hand, and provides new evidence in the
reconstruction of both artists’activities, contact, and
patronage around this date. It is also possible that it
was produced as part of a larger, as yet undiscov-
ered, series representing Man’s Path to Salvation,
and a closely related drawing of the same subject,
perhaps produced specifically as a design for stained
glass, is currently held in a Netherlandish private
collection.1
Nevertheless, a number of the roundel’s
motifs diverge markedly from the drawing, sug-
gesting that Wouter exerted control over the design-
ing and embellishing of the composition, and was
not just slavishly copying the work of other artists.
Provenance
Dagnam Park, former collection of Sir Thomas
Neave, the second baronet (1761-1848) and his
direct descendants
21

1
Van Floris tot Rubens; Meestertekeningen uit een Belgische
Priveverzameling, Exh. Cat., Brussels, Musée des Beaux-Arts,
and Maastricht, Bonnefanten Museum, 2016.
Related literature
Tim Husband (et al.), The Luminous Image; Paint-
ed Glass roundels in the Lowlands, 1480-1560, Exh.
May 23-August 20, 1995, chapter 14, pp. 198-211.
Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman, ‘Wouter Crabeth
from Gouda: his glass panels in Britain and a newly
discovered design’, in The Burlington Magazine,
vol. 153 (2011), pp. 458-463.
Peter van den Brink, ‘The prophet Habakkuk and
the angel. A newly discovered glass panel by
Wouter Crabeth’, in Oud Holland, vol. 128-4 (2015),
pp. 165-170.
22

24
9. (17554008)
Artemis and Eros (?), possibly after a design by
Frans Floris (1517-1570)
Dated 1564
Ø 26.2 cm
This beaufully painted roundel, embellished
with silver stain, pink sanguine, sgraffito (scratched)
highlights, and a wide variety of brushwork, is an
unusual allegorical scene that is most plausibly
identifiable as a representation of Artemis/Diana
and Eros/Amor, who appear together to the right
of a splendid Renaissance fountain. Visible in the
distance is a hunter pursuing a stag, which offers
both an allegory for the hunting of love and a clue to
the possible identity of the foreground figures (the
Greek goddess of hunting, wild animals, virginity,
and childbirth, Artemis, and Diana her Roman coun-
terpart, are often depicted with the attribute of a deer
or stag). A further motif, the bow and quiver of ar-
rows lying on the ground nearby, further emphasises
the hunting metaphor. They could be the accutre-
ments of Eros, who is traditionally viewed as some-
what pernicious in nature, and the act of quenching
his thirst with a ewer of water may be symbolic of
Artemis’/Diana’s ability to tame his character. Unu-
sually for roundels this example also bears a date,
1564, which appears on the gold-framed plaque on
the base of the fountain, making it a rare document
for glass painting of the period.
The treatment and imagery of this roundel cer-
tainly points to Antwerp as its place of origin, as
does the size of the glass, which at a diameter of 26
cm is of a quality and size typical for Antwerp work-
shops; glass painters in this city routinely claimed
the largest glass sheets on transport ships passing
through the port on their way from the Alsace-Lor-
raine region. The style of the painting is particularly
evocative of the work of the Antwerp-based painter
Frans Floris ( 1519/1520-1570), and it is likely that
our painter combined his own acute skill with en-
graved or drawn designs (of a type similar to that
reproduced below) by Floris or his immediate circle.
Fig. 1
Pieter van der Heyden, after a design by Frans Floris (1517-
1570)
Suzanna and the Elders
1556
Provenance
direct descendants
25

26
10. (17554002)
The Indigo Dyers
Low Countries
c. 1600
13.3 x 12.9 cm

Raised on a low circular platform in a simple
stone-walled workshop, two men stir yarn in a bar-
rel of blue dye with long wooden sticks. The bar-
rel is raised so as to make cleaning any spilt dye
easier, and the niche cut into the wall behind may be
a small basin for hand washing during the process.
Blue, and particularly indigo dye, has long been
one of the most expensive, luxurious, and sought-af-
ter colours in the dyers palette. During the later Mid-
dleAges, the colour blue became associated with the
Virgin’s purity and the colour of the heavens. In Eu-
rope, the first common source for indigo dye was the
woad plant, which has been harvested for the pur-
pose since the Neolithic era, but during the sixteenth
century increased trade with the Far East brought
with it an even richer dye from the Indigofera ge-
nus, a plant family native to the Tropics. Imported
indigo was not wholly well received however, and
to protect the woad trade laws were passed in parts
of France and Germany between 1577 and 1603 ban-
ning what they called the ‘Devil’s dye’, the use of
which was argued to lead to rotting of yarn fibres.
The depiction of professions, trades, and spe-
cialisms in stained glass was well established by the
time our panel was produced, and was furtherfacili-
tated in the sixteenth century by the publishing of
printed books such as Jost Amman’s Das Stände-
buch (‘The Book of Trades’) in 1568. It is likely that
our glass painter adapted existing designs from just
such a source at the behest of a clothworker or dyer
desirous to own images showing the various steps
and aspects of his own profession. The panel’s size
indicates that it could well have been made for a pri-
vate context, such as the dyer’s workshop where it
may have been displayed in the window as a form of
advertisement, although it is similarly likely to have
been made for the communal guildhall in a large
civic centre.
Provenance
direct descendants
27
11 & 12 (17554006 & 17554004)
Saints Simon the Zealot and Andrew
Southern Low Countries
c. 1600
Simon: 13 x 10.2 cm; Andrew: 13.3 x 9.9 cm
These two rectangular panels, painted using a
subtle palette of blue and pink sanguine pigments
alongside the conventional vitreous enamel, origi-
nate from what was most likely a larger series de-
picting the Apostles of Christ. Both saints stand
on grassy mounds enlivened by a few economical
brushstrokes swiftly applied to simulate plants and
leaves, and both hold the instruments of their mar-
tyrdom; the cross for Saint Andrew and the saw for
Saint Simon.
The representation of the Apostles in individual
compositions found widespread popularity both in
Italy and the Netherlands during the sixteenth cen-
tury, as a result of prints executed in the 1520s by
Marcantonio Raimondi after designs by Raphael.
The present figures are not drawn verbatim from
Raimondi’s engravings but are so reminiscent of
them that they must look to a similar source, per-
haps one embellished and altered by a Flemish
draughtsman. Certainly, their ‘Italian connection’
would have been an important aspect of their appeal
.
to a local buyer, whether they were commissioned
specifically or (more likely) made to a repeatable
pattern and sold on the open market.
Provenance
direct descendants

28
13. (17553003
Neptune, after a design by Hendrick Goltzius
(1558 Bracht-1617 Haarlem)
Northern Low Countries
c. 1590-1620 (after 1589)
9.4 x 8.3 cm
This small panel shows the naked figure of
Neptune brandishing his trident, the upper section
of which was likely cut off when the panel was re-
duced to its current size. The landscape beyond is
blocked in with blue enamel, the care with which it
was applied evident in the way it encircles the fig-
ures and horses without overlapping their outlines;
a level of control that would have been particularly
demanding of the glass painter at such small scale.
Silver stain enlivens Neptune’s windswept cloak
and adds variety to the hills and buildings, while
a vivid concentrate of pink sanguine pigment col-
ours the costume of the man looking on behind.
The source for this remarkable fragment was
an engraving after a design by Hendrick Goltzius
(1558 Bracht-1617 Haarlem). The complete scene
of the engraving depicts a passage from Book I of
Ovid’s Metemorphoses, in which Neptune and the
rivergods unleash a flood that will drown human-
kind (Fig. 1). Neptune appears on the right, about
to break open the ground with his trident and un-
leash its hidden waters, while to the left the river-
gods upend their waterjars over the earth. With
the resurgence of interest in Classical texts during
the Renaissance, Ovid’s works became a popular
source for image makers, and the engraving is one
of fifty-two images drawn from the Metamorphoses.
Since both Goltzius and his colleague Franco
Estius (fl. 1580s-1594), who contributed the
engravings’ accompanying texts, were active in the
city of Haarlem in the Northern Low Countries, it
is likely that our panel was produced in that city
or another centre in the region shortly after the
engraving’s publication.
Provenance
direct descendants
29
Fig. 1
After Hendrick Goltzius
Neptune Plotting the Destruction of Man
Northern Low Countries
1589

30 31
14. (8907)
The Nativity
Duchy of Savoy or Burgundy
c. 1460
Ø 19.3 cm
This exquisite early roundel, in flawless
condition, depicts the Nativity of Christ. Within a
modest, low-roofed stable, Mary kneels in prayer
before the Christ Child as he lies on a length of
her mantle at the lower edge of the scene. Joseph
is depicted on one knee in an act of genuflection,
his hat in his right hand and his left holding his
cane. The ox and ass appear at centre, craning their
necks to see the Child, and to the left of the group
two shepherds look on from behind a wattle fence.
The intimate scale of this Nativity belies its sig-
nificance as one of the most important survivals from
the first period of stained glass roundel production
in Europe. Even in the context of this newly formed
genre of object, a format that demanded the careful
negotiation of compositional motifs, our artist has
exerted masterful control over his imagery and ma-
terials.And while the figures have been arranged and
the setting simplified so as to concentrate the view-
er’s focus onto the core aspects of the narrative, the
wholeroundelisfilledwithpattern,colour,anddetail.
It is highly likely that our artist had direct con-
tact with the work of some of the foremost paint-
ers of his age, not least as a result of his clear level
of skill but also because his composition borrows
motifs from a number of painted sources. It seems
likely, for example, that he had seen Petrus Chris-
tus’ c. 1455 Nativity (Washington, National Gal-
lery of Art) or a close variant of its composition,
since the perspective and arrangement of the stable
building tightly cropped by the edges of the roun-
del offers direct parallels to Christus’ design. He
may also have been influenced by Robert Campin,
whose Nativity of c. 1426 (Dijon, Musée des Beaux-
Arts) depicts the Virgin kneeling in much the same
manner as our figure, turned to the right with her
hands raised in prayer and looking down to the
Christ Child in front of her knees. Also of some-
what Campinesque treatment is the straw-strewn
stable floor and the styling of the figures’ draperies.
His knowledge of Burgundian painting and
painters need not pin our artist to that region how-
ever, since from the middle of the fifteenth century
onwards the compositions of successful and re-
nowned artworks were becoming more and more
widely known across Northern Europe through the
dissemination of artists’ pattern books and work-
shop drawings, and with the advent of the printed
image. A circular engraving with somewhat similar
stylistic and figural details now in the British Mu-
seum attests to the fact that already at this early date
a sophisticated market seems to have emerged for
roundel designs, even if ours is one of the very few
end products to have survived from such a context
(fig. 1).
Fig. 1
School or circle of the Master of the Playing Cards
The Nativity
c. 1440-70 (dated to)
Lehrs 1908-34 I.150.1
Photo: Trustees of the British Museum
Provenance
Private collection, France

32
Clues to our roundel’s localisation may be gleaned
from the iconographic decisions of the artist, par-
ticularly in relation to the represention of Joseph
who, in a manner that seems to prefigure the actions
of the three adoring Magi, is unusually shown doff-
ing his hat to the newborn rather than in his more
conventional act of praying or holding a candle.
A panel painting of the Nativity now in the Kelv-
ingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, by
an anonymous artist active in Savoy around 1440-
1450, shows Joseph with his hat doffed in a mark-
edly similar manner, and might suggest a shared
source or iconographic scheme. Also unusual is
Joseph’s costume, the hood of which is decorated
with stylised ermine tails (rendered in a manner
seen on other Savoyard stained glass of this peri-
od1
). It may be intended as a reference to Joseph’s
alleged lineage (he was a descendant of King Da-
vid), or together with the somewhat enlarged scale
of the figure could be meant as a pseudo-portrait
of the patron for whom the roundel was commis-
sioned, and would be fitting for a courtly context.
The Duchy of Savoy enjoyed close dynas-
tic connections to Burgundy and mercantile links
to cities such as Bruges and Tournai at this date,
and a number of artists active in northern work-
shops either completed commissions for the Sa-
voyard nobility or, as is the case with the Burgun-
dian-trained Antoine de Lonhy, actually moved
to the court at Chambéry to work for the Dukes
of Savoy.2
With this in mind it is somewhat diffi-
cult to place the present roundel with certainty in
either region, not least since it appears to speak
something of a hybrid language between the two.
_________________________________________
1
Compare with the standing prophet figure in the win-
dow of Saint James, formerly of the cathedral of Saint-
Pierre and now held in the Musee d’Art et d’histoire,
Geneva, illustrated in Ellen J. Beer, Corpus Vitrearum
Medii Aevi; Schweiz III, Die Glasmalereien der Schweiz
aus dem 14. Und 15. Jahrhundert, Plate 188 and 193.
2
Till-Holger Borchert, The Age of Van Eyck; The
Mediterranean World and Early Netherlandish Paint-
ing 1430-1530, Exh. Cat., Bruges, 2002, p. 112.
Fig. 2
Anonymous (Savoy?)
Nativity with Saint Jerome, a Pope (Saint Gregory?) and a
Praying Cardinal
c. 1440-50
Glasgow, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
31

34 35
15. (3011)
The Angel of the Annunciation
Duchy of Burgundy
c. 1480
Ø 17.8 cm
The kneeling figure of the Archangel Gabriel
turns in three-quarter profile to the right, announc-
ing the birth of Christ to the Virgin who may have
appeared on another roundel set nearby in a larger
religious window. He holds a banner with the text
of the Angelical Salutation - ave mar[ia] gratia - and
with it, a long sceptre topped with a fleur-de-lys.
More than any other roundel in this catalogue,
the Angel of the Annunciation is a subject emphati-
cally linked with light because it was believed that,
like light passing through glass without causing it
to break, the Virgin conceived Christ without any
physical rupture to her body. Moreover, light was be-
lieved by Medieval theologians to be the appearance
of God’s divinity on earth, and glass offered a way of
capturing - and effectuating - this divine light with a
real, tangible material. Therefore, Annunciation im-
agery came to be a dominant iconographic model for
stained glass painters in the later Middle Ages, since
it could so explicitly evoke the miraculous Incarna-
tion whenever light - God’s light - shone through it.
This unusual roundel is stylistically related to
stained glass produced in the Duchy of Burgundy
during the final decades of the fifteenth century,
but it is of remarkable rarity since so little material
of a similar date from this or any region has sur-
vived. The treatment of the wings, the feathers of
which are dashed with short brushstrokes, reveals
the legacy of Burgundian painting from the ear-
ly years of the century, visible in Jean Malouel’s
large Pietà in the Musée du Louvre for example.
Three other late fifteenth-century Annunciation
roundels (two complete and one of a fragmentary
state) likely to have been made in Burgundian work-
shops are preserved in a large composite window at
the Hôtel Dieu in Beaune.
Provenance
Former collection Bruce J. Axt and Wendy Judge,
Altadena (California, USA)
However, unlike these examples, our angel appears
alone on his roundel, a compositional decision that
may have been influenced by folding altarpieces of
the period (on which it is much more common to see
the angel and the Virgin on separate painted panels).
Related literature
T. Husband, ‘Stained Glass before 1700 in Ameri-
in the History of Art, Monograph Series 1, vol. 39,
Washington, 1991, p. 36
Auction catalogue European Works of Art and
Armour, Furniture and Tapestries, Sotheby’s New
York, June 14, 1996, lot no. 180.

36 37
16. (17584001 )
Saint Barbara Arrested and Led Away
Low Countries, Duchy of Brabant, Brussels (?)
c. 1525-1530
Ø 22.5 cm
With his thumb pointing down in a gesture
of condemnation, a richly clad king of towering
stature dismisses a woman who, being grappled by
two men-at-arms, is led away. Behind them on the
left an right are two smaller scenes, which help to
identify the roundel’s narrative as the story of Saint
Barbara, the female martyr who was locked in a
tower by her father but who remained steadfast to
God and renounced her father’s pagan beliefs. On
the left, we see her father entering the tower he has
had built to imprison her, returning from his jour-
ney away to find that she had had built three win-
dows in its walls; symbols of the Holy Trinity. On
hearing the truth of her faith, Barbara’s father con-
demns her to death, at which she is miraculously
hidden in a stone and alights on a mountain, where
she prays to God. This is the scene visible on the
right, with Barbara holding her hands in prayer in
a hilly landscape, and her father pursuing her with
his sword drawn. Another character lies on the far
right of this ancilliary scene, pointing towards the
saint. He is the evil shepherd who betrays Bar-
bara’s location to her father, and upon doing so is
cursed by her and has his flock of sheep turned into
locusts. Three sheep can be seen grazing around
him, unaware of their impending metamorphosis.
The story of Saint Barbara’s marytrdom is not
recounted in the bible or mentioned in any of the
early martyrologies, but was instead spread through
apocryphal texts such as the Golden Legend, a pop-
ular thirteenth-century hagiography of saints widely
read and published in numerous editions throughout
the later Middle Ages. The scenes depicted on the
present roundel are taken almost directly from the
Golden Legend, although the large central group is
intended to symbolise the story of her condemnation
in general, since it in fact encompasses a number of
individual moments in the narrative.
Provenance
The property of a gentleman; Christie’s London, July
6, 1993, lot 58; London, Sam Fogg Gallery; New
York, Otto Naumann Ltd. Gallery; New York, for-
mer collection Jonathan Trace; Hidden Glen Farms
(Ontario, Canada), former collection Irvin and Anita
Schorsch (New York).
Stylistically, the painting of this perfectly pre-
served roundel, especially that of the faces and
robes, is remicinent of the work of the famous Brus-
sels painter Bernard van Orley (1491/1492 Brus-
sels -1542 Brussels). A number of roundels, some
depicting the story of Susanna and others detailing
Christ’s Passion, incorporate closely comparable
facial types and stylistic motifs, and may suggest
the work of a single, highly skilled and productive
workshop active in that city with close links to van
Orley’s atelier (Canterbury, Beaney Institute and
Ghent, STAM). As with these examples, it is date-
able to the first third of the sixteenth century, and
around 1530 at the very latest. One other roundel
with the same composition is currently known, and
is preserved in the Museum Charlier in Brussels,
but it was undoubtedly painted some years after
our example, and is of coarser treatment (fig. 1).
Fig. 1
Saint Barbara Arrested and Led Away
Low Countries, Duchy of Brabant, Brussels (?)
Second quarter 16th century
Brussels, Museum Charlier

17. (10293)
Saint Eligius of Noyon
Southern Flanders, Tournai (?)
c. 1525
18.2 x 20.9 cm
Dressed in the mitre and cope of a bishop, Saint
Eligius of Noyon (also spelled Eloy) sits reading on
a large carved throne. He rests his crozier against his
left shoulder and in his right hand holds his attribute
of a hammer.
Saint Eligius was born in c. 590 in the vil-
lage of Chaptelat, close to the city of Limoges,
and died in c. 669 in the city of Noyon. Together
with Saint Remacle he founded the monastery of
Solignac on his own estates and was appointed
bishop of Noyon and Tournai in c. 640. During his
life, he also worked as a goldsmith, mint-master and
personal advisor to the Frankish king Chlotar II, and
several remarkable treasures of goldsmith’s work
have been attributed to his hand (the reliquaries of
Saint Germanus of Auxerre and Saint Martin for ex-
ample).Thelegendofhislifewas,aswiththatofSaint
Barbara (Cat. No. 16) disseminated primarily by the
Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. Accord-
ing to his hagiography he kept an apprentice who,
when shoeing horses cut off their feet, changed the
horseshoes, and put the feet back on the horses’
legs. The horses miraculously showed no injuries
from such treatment, and it came to be believed
that the apprentice had been none other than Christ
Himself. This clearly embellished story neverthe-
less offered a parable for the work Eloy undertook
during his time as bishop among the pagans: to re-
move the pagan elements, cleanse and improve the
people, and implement the New Faith in society.
As a result of his career and legend combined, he
would later become the patron saint of metalwork-
ers, carpenters, farriers, goldsmiths, and even min-
ers, since each profession works with hammers.
Although the present fragment has been cut
down from a larger roundel it remains a remarkable
and masterful piece of painting on some of the finest
quality glass available to the Medieval craftsman,
and its inclusion of a damascene-patterned back-
ground is of extreme rarity amongst surviving gri-
saille roundels.
38 39

42
18. (16651/16652 )
Allegories of Caritas and Tolerance: The Virgin
and Child in a landscape and A Shepherdess and
a Scholar
Northern France
c. 1525
Both panels c. 41 x 35cm
Inscriptions
Window of The Virgin and Child in a Landscape:
Inscribed across the border quarries and also on the
central text pane: “Sur tout il n(‘)est que d(‘)e(n)du-
rer” (Above all, you only have to tolerate/endure)
Window of A Shepherdess and a Scholar
Border: “Sur tout il n(‘)est que d(‘)e(n)durer” (Above
all, you only have to tolerate/endure)
Border bottom (fragment from elsewhere): “ne
peult” (can not);
Central pane left: “Garder me co(n)vie(n)t bergerie
/ mal ac(c)oustree (et) peu nour(r)ie / et si n(’)en
oze murmurez” (The sheepfold is fit to house me, so
poorly clothed and little nourished (as I am), and
yet I dare not murmur, (for) most important is just to
tolerate/endure)
Central pane right: “Sur tout il n(‘)est que d(‘)e(n)
durer” (Above all, you only have to tolerate/endure)
Central pane bottom right: “Ente(n)deme(n)t” - dis-
cussed below.
These remarkable windows are rare survivals
amongst medieval stained glass, both for their state
of preservation (retaining many of their original
border sections) and for their mix of religious and
secular themes in painted images of the highest
quality. Within elaborate foliate borders intertwined
with text scrolls, the roughly square central panels in
each window depict figurative scenes set in pastoral
landscapes; the first shows the Virgin and Child ac-
companied by dancing putti, and its counterpart a
meeting between a shepherdess (identifiable by the
shepherd’s houlette in her right hand) and a scholar.
While the accompanying mottoes indicate that we
are to read the panel with the Virgin and Child as an
allegory of motherly love and tolerance (rendered
emphatic by the antics of the children who play
around her feet), the iconography of the second pan-
el, with two figures from opposite ends of the so-
cial spectrum meeting on grazing pastures, is more
complex. As with its counterpart, the main central
scene is framed within a border bearing the motto
‘il tout sur n’est que d’endurer’ written on a series
of scrolls intertwined with foliate decoration. How-
ever, unique to this panel is the inclusion of a longer
three-line inscription above the central scene, which
reads ‘Garder me co(n)vie(n)t bergerie / mal ac(c)ou-
stree (et) peu nour(r)ie / et si n(’)en oze murmurez’,
with the six word motto already mentioned repeated
to its right. Although somewhat difficult to translate,
together the lines form a rhyming pastoral quatrain,
and the recurring, familial motto completes a four
line stanza that reads;
The sheepfold is fit to house me,
so poorly clothed and little nourished (as I am),
and yet I dare not murmur,
(for) most important is just to tolerate/endure
It is possible that the shepherdess is to be inter-
preted as a pastour crestïen, or an allegory of Chris-
tian pastoralism, since the first half of the quatrain
evokes the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John, in
which the image of the sheepfold and of Christ as a
shepherd guarding His flock are recurring motifs.1
In this context, the depiction of two goats fighting in
the background, one black and one white, may also
be an allusion to the struggle for the soul inferred
both in John’s text, and more obliquely by the sec-
ond half of the quatrain.
The imagery is further nuanced, however, by the
one-word inscription in the scene’s lower right-hand
corner, which seems to read as ‘Ente(n)deme(n)t’.
This word describes a medieval conception of under-
standing and intellect that seems to have stemmed
Provenance
Former collection of Uno Langmann, Vancouver
(until 2014)
from Aristotle’s Ethics, in which it forms one of the
author’s five intellectual virtues or virtus intellec-
tuelles: art, science, prudence, sapience, and enten-
dement. It can be seen illustrated both in the text
and accompanying imagery of Nicole Oresme’s (c.
1320 – 1382) translations of the Ethics into French2
,
and by the sixteenth century had become largely
subsumed within the well-developed discourse on
Humanist Philosophy and the LiberalArts.3
The rise
of Humanism in northern Europe, marked by such
publications as Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Enchiridion
militis Christiani of 1501, provides a potent, semi-
secular philosophical context into which this panel
might justifiably be situated. Largely brought about
by members of the powerful Burgundian court, the
spreading of Humanist concepts throughout France
and the Lowlands is evinced in the affection they
held for texts such as Caxton’s The Play of Chess
of 1474. Amongst others, this humorous treatise
operated as an allegory of fixed social structures in
which each rank has its allotted role, a theme echoed
in the meeting of the two figures on our panel.
The choice of imagery for these unusual scenes
seems to have been adapted partly from contem-
porary print sources, all of which would have been
newly available to the glass painter at the time of
their creation. The figures of the Virgin and Child
are particularly faithful copies of Albrecht Dürer’s
Virgin and Child with a Monkey (Fig. 1), while the
accompanying putti who dance at the Virgin’s feet
are taken almost directly from an etching by Mar-
cantonio Raimondi after Raphael’s Dance of Cu-
pids, which had been published in Antwerp in the
1520s. The popularity of Italian print sources in
Northern France can be traced in part to the Burgun-
dian court. Philip of Burgundy, for example, took
his court artist Jan Gossaert with him to Rome in
1508-9, exposing him to Italian influences that re-
emerge in that artist’s paintings over the next two
decades, including his famous Venus and Amor of
1521, now in the Musée d’Art Ancien, Brussels. The
composition of the second panel appears to derive
ultimately from the late fifteenth-century Annun-
ciation prototypes of Martin Schongauer, reversed
and with the angel translated into the figure of the
scholar (Fig. 2), although here too there are distinct
Dürerian influences.
It is possible that these panels were accompanied
43
Fig. 1
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)
Virgin and Child with a
Monkey
c. 1498
Fig. 2
Martin Schongauer (c. 1455
-1491)
The Virgin of the
Annunciation
c. 1490 - 1491
by representations of the four other Virtues listed
by Aristotle, with the Virgin and Child forming the
central scene, or alternatively by scenes from the
Life of Christ (which would help explain the quarry
with soldiers’ heads on the ‘Entendement’ panel,
apparently taken from a larger Arrest or Crucifix-
ion group). Such series, of which our set would
have been of some considerable cost considering
the quality of this surviving pair, were often com-
missioned by burghers and local politicians of high
social standing. They would be mounted into larger
glass windows either in a private domestic context
or in a semi-public environment such as a town hall
or courthouse, both of which contexts would befit
the secular nature of the ‘Entendement’ panel per-
fectly.

45
There is no question that these windows are
French, and can both be dated to c. 1525. The use of
armoured figures, and in particular, the heads of war-
riors within circular niches as is visible on the Virgin
and Child window, can be found in several examples
of northern French stained glass from this date, in-
cluding a rectangular bordered panel at Genicourt-
sur-Meuse, in the church of Saint Mary Magdalene,
dated circa 1525 (illustrated in M. Herold et.al., Le
Vitrail en Lorraine du XIIe au XXe siècle, Nancy,
Cat. 56, p. 233), and a related set of four panels from
the Franciscan convent at Ormes-et-Ville, near Nan-
cy, painted in 1529 and now held in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York (Inv. No. 41.190.449).
Compare also a head in the church of Saint-Pierre
and Sainte-Evre, Thelod (M. Herold et.al., Le Vitrail
en Lorraine du XIIe au XXe siècle, Nancy, 1983, p.
350). As for the figure types, with rounded faces and
voluminous and characterful hairstyles, comparisons
can be drawn to panels in Epinal, Bar-le-Duc, and
the Musées de Metz, all of northern French origin.
Both the choice of language and the letter forms of
the painted inscriptions are also typical of French art
of the period; the script used on both is of a Renais-
sance form found commonly in French manuscripts
of the same period, and particularly those associated
with Rouen.
_________________________________________
1
J. Taylor, The making of poetry: late-medieval French poetic
anthologies, Brepols, 2007.
2
See for example the illustrated version of Oresme’s Les
éthiques d’Aristote in The Hague, Rijksmuseum Meermanno-
Westreenianum, MS 10 D 1.
3
See I. Veldman, ‘Characteristics of Iconography in the Low-
lands during the Period of Humanism and the Reformation:
1480 to 1560’, in T. Husband, The Luminous Image; Painted
Glass Roundels in the Lowlands, 1480 – 1560, New York,
1995, pp. 15-31.

46
19. (10940)
Bust of a boy, perhaps Cupid
Northern France, Paris (?)
c. 1545-1550
Ø 25.3 cm
This large roundel depicts the bust-length portrait
of a fair-haired young boy turned in three-quarter
profile to our left against a background of deep purple
glass enlivened with swirling rinceaux decoration.
Probably removed from a larger dismantled win-
dow and set into a roundel format with associated
fillets of purple at a later date, this magnificent frag-
ment of figurative glass nevertheless encapsulates
the whole gamut of techniques and effects available
to the Renaissance glass painter. Silver stain, pink
sanguine (both opaque and in a translucent wash),
delicate stippled shadows and brushed mid-tones,
outlines (also known as tracelines) painted free-
hand with a brush, and sgraffito highlights are all
utilised on a single sheet of carefully shaped and
grozed glass with masterful effect. The acutely ren-
dered details of hair, flesh, and form, and the scale
of the figure – larger than any other in this catalogue
– underscore the image with a vital sense of realism.
Since the quality of the painting is so refined and
its stylistic approach undoubtedly French in charac-
ter, it is only logical to look to the most important
centres of stained glass production in Renaissance
France for its origin. The work of Parisian artists
such as Gauthier de Campes (also known as the Maî-
tre de Montmorency, the Maître des Privileges de
Tournai, and the Maître de Saint Gilles) offers some
close parallels. Windows painted by de Campes in
the 1540s and now in the churches of Saint Andrew
in Great Saxham, Suffolk (fig. 1), and Saint-Etienne
du Mont and Saint-Merry (fig. 2) in Paris, incor-
porate faces of a markedly similar nature, and it is
likely that our artist was active in de Campes’ mi-
lieu during the middle years of the sixteenth century.
Related literature
G-M. Leproux, La peinture à Paris sous le règne
de François 1er, Paris 2001, pp. 39-108.
Fig. 1 (above)
Church of Saint Andrew, Great Saxham (photo: http://step-
neyrobarts.blogspot.nl/2012/05/great-saxham-suffolk.html)
Fig. 2 (below)
Church of Saint-Merry, Paris (photo: from Leproux 2001)
47

48
20. (16342)
The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian
Northern France, Alsace-Lorraine
Third quarter 15th century
56 x 54.5 cm
This complete and unrestored quatrefoil window
panel represents the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian
(† c. 288), as recounted in Jacobus de Voragine’s
Golden Legend. Sebastian, according to his legend,
was a body guard of the Roman Emperor Diocletian
and harboured a secret belief in Christ. When the
Emperor learned of the Saint’s faith, he ordered that
Sebastian be ‘tied to a stake […] and commanded
his soldiers to transfix him with arrows.’1
Despite
this being the most common artistic representation
of Sebastian’s martyrdom, he was, according to leg-
end, rescued and healed by Irene of Rome. Shortly
afterwards he went to Diocletian to warn him about
his sins but was captured and clubbed to death. Dur-
ing the later Middle Ages Sebastian was commonly
invoked as the patron saint of athletes and archers
(many archers’ guilds used him as their emblem for
example), as well as a protector against the plague.
The window’s composition (taken in part from
early engravings by the Master E.S.) is cleverly
organised to accomodate an inherently challeng-
ing format, one imposed by the shapes of the stone
mullions into which it was originally set. Sebastian,
having been bound by his arms to a tree sprouting
at the centre of the composition, occupies almost
the entire vertical section of the window, while the
left- and right-hand lobes are used to depict other
aspects of the narrative; an archer aims his taught
bow at the Saint from the right, and on the left a
soldier whispers to Diocletian, telling him of Se-
bastian’s faith. The window’s tonal choices are also
very carefully considered, the saint’s body and loin
cloth being picked out in semi-opaque white glass
and the rest of the window tinted with at least two
concentrations of silver stain. These chromatic and
compositional decisions serve to emphasise Se-
bastian’s prominence as well as the legibility of
the design - a necessity for glass intended to oc-
cupy the upper registers of a church’s tall lancet
windows. Similar window formats can be found
in churches across the Alsace and Lorraine re-
gions of north-eastern France, as at Saint Martin
at Thuilley-aux-Groseilles and Saint Jean-Baptiste
at Amance. Another window taken from the same
design and undoubtedly painted in the same work-
shop survives in situ in the church of Saint Laurent2
,
Azelot, Lorraine, and it is likely that our window
was taken from a church in the same region (fig. 1).
Fig. 1
The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian
Third quarter 15th century
Eglise Saint Laurent, Azelot, France
Photograph: Hannah Rickard
_________________________________________
1
J. Voragine, The Golden Legend, G. Ryan and H. Ripperger
trans., New York, Arno Press, 1969, p. 108.
2
Hannah Rickard, in an unpublished 2013 essay on the
present panel, brought the Azelot window and other related
windows in the Alsace-Lorraine region to our attention, and it
is on her research that this entry is for the most part based.
Provenance
Private collection, Switzerland
49

50
21. (7555)
An Angel Holding a Shield with the Arms of the
Willemaers Family
Low Countries, Duchy of Brabant, Louvain
c. 1530
Ø 29.9 cm (with border); Ø c. 22.7cm (without
border)
An angel stands on a tiled floor, a large armo-
rial shield strung with ribbons, and with the arms of
the Willemaers family of Louvain (argent three pales
azure on a chief gules an ox’s head cabosed or) on its
face.Although originally a family of butchers (hence
the presence of the ox’s head), the Willemaers fam-
ily had been residents of the city of Louvain from
at least the 14th century and its members appear to
have risen to some social standing. Preserved in the
collection of the Gemeentemuseum in Helmond, The
Netherlands, is a small silver ciborium with the in-
scription “RDVS. D. PETRVS WILLEMAERS Per-
sona. ac. Pastor in Helmont ME FIERI FECIT”, ac-
companied by the same coat of arms and dated 1647.
The style of the glass painting is typical of Lou-
vain production during the first third of the six-
teenth century, although the rendering of the an-
gel’s hair, facial features, wings and draperies
are of breathtaking quality. The border, which is
composed of glass filets encased in a lead ma-
trix, is typical of the conservation and mount-
ing techniques employed by Roy Grosvenor
Thomas, who owned the roundel by 1913 (fig. 1).
Literature
The Grosvenor Thomas Collection of Ancient
Stained Glass, Part II, Charles Gallery, New York
1913, cat. no. 61
Washington 1991, p. 188.
P. Crombecq, Het Leuvense beenhouwersgeslacht
Willemaers, Edegem, 2008 (on-line article).
Provenance
Former collection Roy Grosvenor Thomas, London
(see fig. 1); Charles Gallery, New York (1913); for-
mer collection James W. Newton, San Antonio, Texas
(USA); former collection Victoria and Eric Steinberg,
Westchester, New York (USA).
Fig. 1
The Willemaers roundel on display at No. 1, Holland Park Road
(photo: RKD, The Hague)
51

52
22. (7554)
An Angel holding a Shield with the Arms of the
Hinojosa(?) Family
c. 1525-1535
Ø 28.8 cm (with border); Ø c. 22.7 cm (without
border).
An angel stands on a tiled floor of geometric
pattern in front of a low parapet with a wooded
landscape beyond, holding a large armorial shield
by the ends of a suspension belt. Although a num-
ber of variants in this family’s heraldry do exist, the
arms depicted on the shield (argent two lions ram-
pant, guardant combattant sable surmounted by a
fleur de lys or) are probably identifiable as those of
the Hinojosa (Hijnoiossa, Hinionosa, Hiniosa, Hi-
nojossa) family. In the seventeenth century a mem-
ber of the family, Adrian-Pierre, Baron de Hinojo-
sa, was president of the court of Holland, Zeeland
and Friesland, although less is known about their
connection to the Low Countries before this date.
A number of armorial roundels from this pe-
riod showing shields supported by angels or other
figures have survived, although they vary widely
in style. The treatment of the present roundel is
however typical of early sixteenth-century glass
painting in the Low Countries, and particularly in
the workshops of Louvain around 1530. While the
modelling of the figure’s facial features and wings is
clearly of a less refined character than the previous
example of Louvain armorial roundels, the addition
of pink sanguine to the coarsing of the brickwork
and the detail of the Mannerist columns behind the
figure are carefully considered and sensitively ren-
dered alongside masterfully utilised silver stain.
As with the previous roundel, the composite
border of glass filets surrounding this roundel is
typical of the conservation and mounting techniques
employed by Roy Grosvenor Thomas, who had ac-
quired it by 1913 (fig. 1).
Provenance
Former collection Roy Grosvenor Thomas, Lon-
don (see fig. 1); Charles Gallery, New York (1913);
former collection James W. Newton, San Antonio,
Texas (USA); former collection Victoria and Eric
Steinberg, Westchester, New York (USA).
Literature
1913, cat. no. 60.
Washington 1991, p. 188.
.
Fig. 1
The Hinojosa roundel on display at No. 1, Holland Park Road
(photo: RKD, The Hague)
53

23. (14868)
Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata
Northern France
c. 1525
Ø 29.1 cm (with modern border); c. 19.1 cm (with-
out border)
A year before his death, Saint Francis of Assisi
established a hermit’s cell on the mountain known
as ‘La Verna’, close to Arezzo in Tuscany. During
a forty-day fast in the year 1224, he had a vision in
which he received the wounds of the crucified Christ,
who appears at the top left of the composition held
aloft by a seraph. As had become artistic convention
by the date our roundel was painted, the moment of
stigmatisation is explicitly emphasised through the
rendering of lines of action between each of Christ’s
wounds and the corresponding sites on the body of
Saint Francis. Behind him is a receding landscape
dotted with castellated buildings and what appears
to be a church structure on the right, and visible to
the right of the low crest on which Francis kneels is
his disciple Brother Leo.
The stylistic treatment of the design indicates
a northern French origin, and a date of creation of
c. 1525. Although it cannot be localised with cer-
tainty to a specific glasspainter’s workshop such a
reconstruction is also supported by the survival in
situ of another roundel, painted with recourse to the
same composition, in the church of Saint Saturnin
at Limeray, in the Indre-et-Loire department west of
Paris.
54 55

56
24. (16607)
Pseudo-Ortkens workshop
The Crucifixion with Saints Giles and
Elisabeth accompanied by Donors
c. 1520-1525
Ø 22.5 cm
The figure of Christ on the Cross appears at the
very centre of this roundel, accompanied on the left
and right by Saints and a family of kneeling donor
figures. The Saints, clearly identifiable as Giles and
Elizabeth by their respective attributes of a deer and
crown, are most likely name saints for the husband
and wife; Gillis (Flemish for Giles) and Elizabeth
were common first names at this date and it was con-
ventional to invoke a saint who shared your name to
act as an intercessor with God and take the role of
your personal protector.
The subtleties of the brushwork, with layers of
delicate shading effects applied to both sides of the
glass, is of the highest quality, and is characteris-
tic of the work of a successful and skilled workshop
of glass painters active in Louvain between c. 1480
and c. 1520 and known in the surrounding scholar-
ship as the ‘Pseudo-Ortkens’ group. Several schol-
ars have seen close parallels between the Pseudo-
Ortkens roundels and some of Louvain’s foremost
panel painters, and the present example certainly
evokes the paintings of Valentijn van Orley, who is
commonly believed to have been one of the lead art-
ists and designers of glass in this complex artistic
milieu.
Another roundel of the Crucifixion, which has
long been associated through style and provenance
with this group, is preserved in the Museum M Lou-
vain, and a third, which must have been adapted
from the same design as our example, is currently
in a private Belgian collection (fig. 1). Other roun-
dels from the Pseudo-Ortkens group can be found
in the collections of the Royal Museums of Art and
History, Brussels, the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York.
Fig. 1
The Crucifixion with saints and donors
c. 1520-25
Private collection, Schoten (Belgium)
Provenance
Private collection, England
57

25. (16339)
Saint Nicholas as a Baker
Low Countries or Duchy of Burgundy
c. 1500
Ø 32.8 cm (with modern border); Ø c. 19.8 cm
(without border)
This exceptional early roundel depicts the inte-
rior of a bakery, with a man at centre feeding bread
into a large brick oven with the use of a long peel so
as to avoid the heat. On the left, another man kneads
the dough on a table reserved for the purpose, while
on the right a third stands holding another loaf ready
for baking. The man at centre can be identified by
his halo as a saint, and more specifically the young
Saint Nicholas of Myra (before he became a bish-
op), who was commonly invoked as the patron saint
of bakers. This patronage is presumed to originate
from a misinterpretation of his conventional attrib-
utes, three gold coins, as round buns or loaves of
58
bread. When he was young, Nicholas apparently gave
three pieces of gold to a poor neighbour so as to stop
the man selling his daughters into prostitution. Nev-
ertheless, depictions of Nicholas as a baker are ex-
tremely rare; the present roundel is the only one of its
type known. Stylistically, it can be related to a num-
ber of roundels produced in the Low Countries and
the Duchy of Burgundy at the turn of the sixteenth
century, but it is amongst the finest examples to have
survived from this early date. Moreover, its carefully
rendered and semi-secular imagery makes it a highly
significant document of the age.
59

6160
26. (17375)
Saint Bavo of Ghent and a Kneeling Donor
Low Countries, Duchy of Brabant, Louvain (?)
c. 1525
Ø 22.3 cm
On this astonishingly painted roundel, one of
the finest examples of glass painting in the present
catalogue, Saint Bavo stands in the rich armour and
ostrich plumed-helmet of a knight, holding a sword
in his right hand and supporting a masked falcon
(his conventional attribute) on his left. The man
for whom the roundel was painted is shown to the
right of the saint, kneeling before a low prie-dieu
and clothed in the garments of a canon. The figures
are set not in a church space (as would be more typi-
cal with the presence of the wooden prie-dieu) but
instead in an expansive landscape extending over
hillocks to a far horizon, and populated by rocky
outcrops, trees and plants, and a moated castle on
the right.
All of the roundel’s details are worked up with
enormous skill and sensitivity in rich concentrations
and deftly applied strokes of enamel pigment, as
well as several tints of silver stain, the latter baked
to orange on the figures’ costume but left lighter in
the background to suggest the hazy recession of the
landscape. Bavo’s helmet feathers are individually
picked out in white and yellow, while similar care
was taken to delineate the white flowers of the dai-
sies sprouting in the foreground against a surround-
ing area of yellow and the shading of the grass. Even
highlights are evoked with an acute eye for the pos-
sibilities of the medium. As can be found elsewhere
on the roundels in this catalogue, the artist used
the sgraffito technique to scratch away areas of the
enamel and thus expose the clear glass beneath, but
alongside the conventional parallel hatchings he has
also used the technique to void-out more intricate
designs such as the groups of squares cut into the
helmet and breastplate, suggesting bright reflections
in their metallic surfaces.
The style of the painting can be compared to
the best work of the so-called Pseudo-Ortkens work-
shop, believed to have been active in Louvain dur-
ing the latter years of the fifteenth century and the
first quarter of the sixteenth.
An almost identical roundel, lacking the donor’s
coat of arms and of less refined treatment, was for-
merly kept in the Royal Museums of Art and His-
tory, Brussels, but is now presumed lost (fig. 1).
Saint Bavo, originally a profligate man named
Allowinus (c. 589 Liège - c. 654 Ghent), was con-
verted to Christianity by Saint Amand of Elnon. He
gave all his belongings to the poor after the death of
his wife and became a monk, living in the abbey of
Saint Peter in Ghent. The kneeling donor depicted
alongside the saint on our roundel was probably a
canon of one of the large collegiate foundations in
the city since Bavo is rarely invoked elsewhere in
the Low Countries. Although his coat of arms re-
mains to be identified, the inclusion of the fleur-de-
lys suggests a noble or royal birth.
Fig. 1
Saint Bavo of Ghent and a Kneeling Donor
Low Countries, Duchy of Brabant, Louvain (?)
c. 1525-30
Formerly Brussels, Royal Museums of Art and His-
tory, Inv. No. V 2754
Photo: C. J. Berserik
Provenance
Private collection, Essex, acquired prior to 1943

27. (17372)
Saint James Major
France or Low Countries
c. 1525
Ø 20.8 cm
On this entirely intact roundel, one of three in
this catalogue from what is likely to have been a sin-
gle series showing the Disciples of Christ (see also
Cat. Nos. 28 and 29), the figure of Saint James Ma-
jor is depicted standing in a landscape abstracted of
all but the most essential of details; only the ground
on which he stands and the shape of a distant hill are
shown. He holds a staff in the thumb and forefinger
of his left hand and an opened book in his right, and
wears a hat with his conventional attribute of a scal-
lop shell affixed to its upturned brim. The composi-
tion is simple but effective, since our focus is drawn
solely to the pilgrim saint.
The present roundel and the two which follow
were acquired by a private collection in Essex prior
to 1943, and found with a cache of glass believed to
have glazed the windows of the Merchant Taylors’
Hall on Threadneedle Street in the City of London.
It is likely that the glass was removed during the
Blitz of 1940-41 for safekeeping and never replaced
after the war had ended.
Provenance
62 63

64
28. 17373
Saint Judas Thaddeus
France or Low Countries
c. 1525
Ø 20.8 cm
As with the apostles depicted on its compan-
ion roundels (Cat. Nos. 27 and 29) the haloed saint
on this panel stands in a simplified landscape hold-
ing a book and an identifying attribute. However,
the accompanying inscription ‘S(ain)c(t)e judas
thade(us)’ seems to have misinterpreted the figure,
who is actually Simon the Zealot (whose body was
allegedly sawn into pieces and who is thus shown
holding a large-toothed saw), as his companion
Judas Thaddeus, normally depicted with a halberd
or club. It is unlikely that this carefully painted (if
erroneous) inscription was added at a later date,
not least since the letterforms are entirely con-
sistent with early sixteenth-century script, and it
seems more plausible that the artist responsible for
the inscription was not the same painter who ren-
dered the figure but another, perhaps an apprentice
or journeyman, employed in the same workshop.
The spelling of the inscription points to an origin
in France or the southernmost glass-painting centres
of the Low Countries.
.
Provenance
.
65

66
29. (17374)
Saint Peter
France or Southen Low Countries
c. 1525
Ø 20.8 cm
Like its two companion pieces (Cat. Nos. 27 and
28), the figure of a lone apostle stands at the centre of a
simplified landscape of grassy hillocks. Both the large
key in his left hand and the accompanying ‘S(ain)c(t)
e petrus’ inscription painted on the clear glass either
side of his body identify the apostle as Saint Peter. Our
focus is drawn to the most important aspects of the
subject matter through the sparing use of silver stain,
which is restricted to the saint’s attributes, the solid cir-
cle of his halo and the broad lower hem of his robes.
The figure’s clothing, stance, arm positions, facial
type and book are almost identical to those of Saint
James Major in Cat. No. 27, indicating that the same
workshop was responsible for painting both and that
they were designed with recourse to a finite number of
compositional models. Indeed, only James’ staff and
hat have here been swapped for Saint Peter’s covnen-
tional bared head and key, showing how quickly and
effectively a stock of patterns could be adapted to ren-
der an array of differentiated figures.
.
Provenance
.
67

30. (17374)
Saint Urbanus of Langres
Northern France
c. 1525
Ø 22.5 cm
Saint Urbanus of Langres sits beneath the arbour
of a tree with a mountainous valley scene receding to
a high horizon beyond. Dressed in the simple habit
of a monk, he writes on a tablet and holds his attrib-
ute of a vine branch in his left hand. A shield with
three lilies hangs from the lowest branch of tree be-
hind him, although the glass-painter’s monochrome
palette renders the precise identification of the arms
impossible.
Urbanus of Langres was the sixth bishop of
Langres (374-c.450). His Vita, written by one of
the monks of Saint-Bénigne, records that a num-
ber of miracles pertaining to the bishop saint oc-
cured following his death. During the Middle Ages
he became the patron of wine and winegrowers.
The treatment of the figure and its accompany-
ing decoration is entirely typical of French roundels
from the 1520s. Urbanus was buried in Dijon fol-
lowing his death but in 1524 his body was tranferred
to the cathedral of Saint-Bénigne. It would be en-
tirely fitting therefore that the present roundel could
have been made to commemorate this very occasion.
Literature
1913, cat. no. 62
Provenance
London, former collection Roy Grosvenor Thomas;
Charles Gallery, New York (1913); Altadena (Cali-
fornia, USA), former collection Bruce J. Axt and
Wendy Judge; New York, auction house Sotheby’s
New York, June 14, 1996, lot. 178; New York, Otto
Naumann Ltd Gallery; New York; auction house So-
theby’s, New York, January 25, 2007, part of lot no.
9; former collection Jonathan Trace; Hidden Glen
Farms (Ontario, Canada), former collection Irvin
and Anita Schorsch (New York)
.
68 69

31. (16340)
The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John
France
c. 1510
Ø 21.2 cm
The scene of the Crucifixion takes place in
a verdant landscape with the turreted buildings of
a city - presumably a medieval reimagining of Je-
rusalem - visible in the distance. Christ is shown
hanging from a large Tau-shaped cross at the cen-
tre of the scene, its horizontal arms extending right
to the edges of the roundel. To Christ’s right the
Virgin Mary turns away from her Son and clasps
her hands together in despairing acknowledgment
of His fate. On the right, Saint John looks up and
points towards Christ’s crucified body, as if to fo-
cus our attention on the profusely bleeding wound
in His right side and, through doing so, underscore
the sombre iconography of the depicted scene.
The Crucifixion was among the most popu-
lar religious subjects of the later Middle Ages and
of course one of the core moments of the Chris-
tological narrative, and roundels depicting Christ
on the Cross accompanied by the Virgin and Saint
John were mounted in private chapels, domestic
spaces and church buildings alike. The inclusion
of all three figures alludes to the closing stages of
the Crucifixion, when Christ is reputed to have spo-
ken to His mother and Saint John in turn; ‘When
Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom
He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother,
“Woman, behold, your son!” Then He said to the
disciple, “Behold, your mother!” From that hour
the disciple took her into his own household.’1
The charming modelling of the figures’ fac-
es and draperies is skilfully enlivened through the
careful addition of tinted sanguine pigment to the re-
verse of the roundel over the body of Christ and the
faces of the Virgin and Saint John, and the selective
use of silver stain applied to the Crown of Thorn and
the haloes of His companions. Each figure’s halo is
_________________________________________
1
John 19:26-7
70 71
also carefully differentiated in design, emphasising
the different roles that each play in the narrative, and
adding pictorial interest to an already intense and so-
phisticatedrenderingofthemomentofChrist’sdeath.

72
32. (17368)
A Dominican Monk in Prayer before the
Christ Child
Low Countries
c. 1525
20.5 x 11.3 cm
This remarkable fragment from a once com-
plete roundel shows the figure of a tonsured monk
kneeling in a simple tile-floored room before the
Christ Child, who sits on a brocaded cushion sup-
ported by a throne and extends his hand towards
the monk as if in blessing. A window cut into the
wall behind looks out onto a landscape of trees,
and just visible on the floor at the far left is a short
length of fabric that probably belonged to the fig-
ure of the enthroned Virgin originally accompany-
ing Christ to the left. A string of rosary beads ter-
minating in a cross hangs from the monk’s praying
hands and is delicately picked out in silver stain.
The subtle shading of the monk’s robes show
that he is a member of the Dominican Order, a wide-
spread religious confraternity that found particular
popularity in the Low Countries and especially Bra-
bant, where this roundel is likely to have been made.
Provenance
73

74
33. (15591002)
Mary Enthroned, Holding the Christ Child
c. 1530
Ø 22 cm
Under a black cloth of honour supported by two
richlydecoratedRenaissancecolums,theVirginMary
sitsonacushionholdingaratherplayfulChristChild.
Behind the canopy a low parapet gives on to a land-
scape with a church visible ont eh right hand side, and
under the Virgin’s voluminous gold-trimmed mantle
is a geometric floor of patterned and coloured tiles.
This type of composition, showing Mary hold-
ing the Christ Child while seated on a low cushion
(a symbol of her humility) is found on at least three
other roundels thought to originate from a single
glass-painting workshop in Louvain. One is in the
collection of the Brussels Royal Museums of Art
and History (Fig. 1), a second is in the church of
Saint Andrew in Watford, Hertfordshire (Fig. 2), and
another survives in an English private collection.
Some influence nevertheless seems to have
been drawn from the work of the Ghent painter
Hugo van der Goes (1440?-1485), since the figure
of a seated female saint known from a drawing by
an artist in his close circle (now in the Courtauld
Gallery, London) served as the preliminary model
for the Virgin on our roundel. It thus provides an
important piece of evidence for our understand-
ing of the spread of Hugo’s figure types long after
his own death, since the the design of the para-
pet and the Renaissance ornament decorating the
columns most likely date our panel to c. 1530.
Fig. 1
Mary Enthroned, Holding the Christ Child
c. 1530
Brusels, Royal Museums of Art and History, Inv. No. 4021
Fig. 2
Mary Enthroned, Holding the Christ-child
c. 1530
Watford, Church of St Andrew
Provenance
Charlottesville (Virginia) former collection of
Woody and Nancy Bolton; Glen Goin Alpine (New
Jersey), former collection of Ellen G. and Manuel
E. Rionda.
75

76
34. (10045)
Workshop of Pieter Aertsen (1508-1575)
The Prodigal Son’s Festive Meal
c. 1550-1560
Ø 28.6 cm
This large and incredibly finely-painted roun-
del depicts a merry scene, recorded in the Gospel
of Luke: 15:11-32, in which the prodigal son enjoys
a festive meal to celebrate his return home. In the
background at right the meeting of the father and the
prodigal son is visible through the columns of the
loggia-like space in which the festivities take place.
The painting technique and the style of the fig-
ures and their costumes link the present roundel to
a group made after a series of designs, of which one
survives, attributed to the draughtsman and painter
Pieter Aertsen (1508 Amsterdam-1575 Amsterdam,
also known as ”Lange Pier”), who was active for
a time in Antwerp just after the middle of the six-
teenth century. A second roundel with the same
composition was formerly in the collection of Al-
bert Baron Oppenheim in Cologne (his sale from
October 23, 1917, Rudolf Lepke’s Kunst-Auctions-
Haus, Berlin, lot no. 138), and other related roun-
dels depicting scenes from from the same parable
can today be found respectively in museums and
churches in Ghent, Berlin, Oxford, and Llanwarne
(see below). The extremely large size of the roun-
del, which measures over 28 cm in diameter, also
serves to locate it to one of the best Antwerp work-
shops of the period, since it was in that city that the
transport ships arriving from the glass-making cen-
tres of Northern France first docked, and where the
guilds claimed the largest and finest panels of glass.
Related material
The Festive Meal: former collection Albert baron
Oppenheim; The Prodigal Son Receives a Bag of
Money: Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin (destroyed
in 1945), Designmuseum, Ghent (Inv. No. 615);
Departure of the Prodigal Son (Drawing); Staatli-
chen Museen, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (Inv.
No. 11655) dated 1562; Christ church, Llanwarne
(Herefordshire); Lincoln College, Oxford.
Related literature
C.J. Berserik and J.M.A. Caen, Silver-Stained Roun-
dels and Unipartite Panels before the French Revo-
lution, Flanders, Vol. 2: The Provinces of East and
West Flanders. Corpus Vitrearum Belgium, Check-
list Series,Turnhout 2011, pp. 43-45 (on this roundel
and all related material).
77

78
35. (15468)
The Adoration of the Kings
Low Countries, Leyden or Antwerp
c. 1525
Ø 18.3 cm
Seated under a decorative arch highlighted with
ornament and silver stain, the Virgin Mary holds
the Christ Child on her lap, using her left hand to
steady the infant. On the left, the three Kings have
arrived to adore Him and the elderly Caspar kneels
before the couple, bowing his head in genuflection.
Balthasar and Melchior are shown standing behind
him, their crowns, robes, and gifts picked out in yel-
low against a clear ground otherwise dominated by
the dark, chiaroscuro like handling of the enamel.
The glass-painting workshops of Antwerp and
Leyden are both possible candidates for the locali-
sation of the roundel. The heavy use of the enamel
paint would alone indicate a Leyden workshop, but
the style of the figures and their costume has more
in common with the paintings of the Antwerp Man-
nerists in the first half of the sixteenth century.
Provenance
Former collection Emile Zola, Paris.
79

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