North French, circa 1260 and later

Flashed red glass with pot-metal blue, green, yellow and clear glass set into nineteenth-century leads. An even corrosion consistent with age. The panel is largely intact, excepting some breaks mended with strap leads. Two clear glass quarries of associated date used to fill gaps in the red background. The lower section beneath Christ's feet an addition reusing old glass. The heads possibly strengthened and re-fused or replaced using old glass. Some other quarries and some of the drapery incorporating refused pigments. The paint stable. This large glass panel shows the scene of Christ turning water into wine from the marriage feast in Cana, (John 2), in a dominant palette of red, blue, green and yellow glass. The painting techniques, with dark black lines creating trough folds, the use of pot-metal colours and flashed ruby glass all indicate a 13th century date for the glass.
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The thickly painted lines which delineate the hair and the faces in the present panel, the treatment of the eyes, and the ruby glass, flashed against clear glass in order to make it more translucent, are distinctive features of French thirteenth-century glaziers. For comparable flashed red glass see the figure of Saint Peter in Sées Cathedral, Normandy, dating to 1280. The facial types and drapery styles of Christ and the two attendants compare well to the figures of the window with scenes from the Life of the Virgin and the Childhood of Christ in the church of Saint Sulpice in Saint-Sulpice-de-Favières (Essonne) installed between 1255 and 1260 illustrated by Grodecki and Brisac (op.cit., pp. 144-147).

RELATED LITERATURE
L.Grodecki and C.Brisac, Gothic stained glass 1200-1300, London, 1985, pp. figs. 93,111,115,123,129 and 133; P. Williamson, Medieval and Renaissance stained glass in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2003, pl. 19